KARACHI: As the Young Doctors Association (YDA) at the Civil Hospital has warned the authorities that it will suspend outpatient department and elective surgeries on Tuesday if their demands are not met, the Pakistan Medical Association, doctors’ premier organisation, has said such practices at the cost of people’s health are not ‘acceptable’.

The PMA gave its universal guideline in view of a strike called by the YDA in the country, which includes the ongoing protest by the YDA’s activists at the Civil Hospital Karachi.

The executive committee meeting of the PMA Karachi held on Sunday took notice of the strike called by the YDA across the country, particularly in Sindh.

“As a matter of policy,” said a statement issued by the PMA after the meeting, “PMA does not approve of strikes at any cost and putting the healthcare system at halt.”

It said strikes added to miseries already suffered by poor people. “But at the same time PMA is very much concerned about the government apathy towards the justified and genuine demands of the doctors.”

Doctors at the CHK complain that they have not been given the raised stipend by the hospital management despite it had been approved by the competent authority.

Their protest started last week had already created persistent hardships for people who come to the hospital in their thousands every day.

The PMA officials said the amount of monthly stipend paid to the house officers and general physicians was entirely different in Sindh as compare to other parts of the country.

“It is a norm for any government not to pay any attention to the problems being surfaced immediately, rather they wait for the situations to take an ugly turn; and, in the process, a number of poor patients die because of not getting timely medical care. Besides, street violence becomes order of the day.

“PMA strongly condemns this attitude of our government and demands that the government should listen and negotiate with the complaining doctors, to solve the issues before everything goes out of hand.”

A YDA spokesperson, at the same time, has warned the authorities that they would wait for Monday to get their demands accepted. “Otherwise, we’ll boycott the outpatient facilities and elective surgeries.”

The elective surgeries are the pre-planned operations, which are carried out at the hospital in dozens daily.

The officials said that while the PMA condemned the government for its apathy towards the doctors’ demands, at the same time it believed that going on strike and suspending all the healthcare facilities and creating hardships for poor and needy patients was not acceptable.

“There are so many other ways to protest which may not cause the damage and serve the purpose,” they said.

The PMA requested civil society and the media to highlight and support the genuine demands of doctors for smooth running of healthcare of the country.

“We are protesting against non-payment of the raise in our monthly stipends, which should have been paid to us for the past five months,” said a protesting YDA official.

“Our protest will continue until the new stipend is paid with arrears of the past five months,” he added.

Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2017