Service delivery: Ward ‘shut down’ as YDA, professor draw daggers

Nearly 280 patients are examined daily at the Out Patient Department of the ward.

LAHORE:

“Children with failing livers and acute stomach-related problems have nowhere to go as the Young Doctors Association (YDA) has forced the closure of the gastro ward at the Childrens Hospital,” Professor Huma Cheema, head of the gastro ward at the hospital, said on Wednesday.

She was addressing a press conference at the Lahore Press Club.

Cheema said the YDA members who had a problem with her, should not take it out on the patients.

“If a child is vomiting blood, Children’s Hospital is the only place where he would be referred. We have not treated liver failure patients for many days and other departments [of the hospital] cannot deal with them,” she said.

“Patients are being denied treatment because YDA members do not is let people perform their duties at gastro ward,” she said.

Cheema said an average of 280 patients were examined daily at the Out Patient Department of the ward.

She said eight to 10 of these were emergency patients. She said at least 32 patients were admitted to the ward on a normal day.



She said the ward and its ICU were not operational because doctors were not reporting for duty.

“I don’t understand what the problem is. If some doctors failed their exams or were reprimanded for being negligent, it doesn’t give them a right to shut down an entire ward that is only one of its kind in the country,” she said.

Cheema said the dean and medical director of the hospital were aware of the problem.

She said the Young Doctors Association had shut down the ward by sending a single text message.

She said most of the trainees at her ward were women. She said their parents were not letting them join duties out of fear.

A YDA spokesman, however, said the doctors had not shut the ward down.

“We didn’t ask anyone not to work at the ward. The ward hasn’t been shut down because of the Young Doctors Association. Truth is, no one wants to work with Professor Huma Cheema. She is a professor in name only. She has never taught MBBS classes. She also hasn’t trained any post graduate doctor.”

He said Cheema had joined duty in violation of the clause on Appointment and Condition of Services Rules of Punjab Civil Services Act 1974 which stated that a person should be in the country while joining services.

He said Cheema had been abroad when she joined,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 24^th, 2014.