Doctors' strike: Karachi doctors join in

Doctor­s in Karach­i vow to go on strike at 11am tomorr­ow.



LAHORE/KARACHI:


Doctors in Karachi, on Monday, announced that will go on strike from 11am onwards on Tuesday until the government fulfills their demands.

According to Express 24/7 correspondent Sheheryar Mirza, the doctors said that they are holding the strike in support of their colleague in Punjab as well as to have certain demands fullfilled.

The demands made by the doctors include a pay raise to Rs20,000 to Rs30,000 along with provision of certain benefits like free medical treatment for family members.

The doctors will also hold a press conference at 2pm on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, in Faisalabad, at least six patients lost their lives on the same day, owing to the continuing clashes between the Punjab government and the medical staff of the province.

The Young Doctors Association (YDA) asked its members to submit resignations while more than 400 doctors from Multan are set to send their resignations to the Secretary Health Punjab.

The government paying no heed to the doctors’ demands started taking interviews for new hires.

Talking to the media, MS Nishtar Hospital confirmed that so far 10 applications have been received for new recruitments.

The new doctors will take up the job after the government's approval.

Updated from print edition (below)

Doctors’ strike: Sindh doctors vow to support colleagues in Punjab

Even as the Punjab government began terminating the employment of some of the striking junior doctors, their colleagues in Sindh announced on Sunday that they would also be going on strike in solidarity with the Punjab physicians.


Junior doctors in Sindh demanded that their compensation be increased to match the levels of their colleagues in Punjab and threatened to go on strike if their demands are not met by Monday (today), according to Abbas Ali Shah, the president of the Sindh chapter of the Young Doctors Association (YDA). The Punjab chapter of the junior doctors’ association had called the strike on April 1 in that province.

The Punjab YDA had temporarily called off its strike in Dera Ghazi Khan on Sunday, following the terrorist attack there which left dozens of people dead. Nevertheless, a spokesperson for the Punjab YDA, Aftab Ashraf, said that his organisation would continue its strike until their demands were met.

Meanwhile, the Punjab government began cracking down against the striking doctors, terminating the employment of at least 60 of them and replacing them with recent graduates from medical colleges.

The decision was made at a late night meeting on Saturday between the provincial health secretary and hospital administrators.

“Termination notices across Punjab have been given to those who are not resuming their duties and those inciting the strikes in the country,” said Mayo Hospital Vice Chancellor Asad Aslam. “The strike in emergency rooms is against the ethics of any doctor.”

Aslam said that Mayo Hospital had begun the hiring process for at least 18 new medical college graduates who had not been hired due to a hiring freeze in the province’s hospitals that had been ongoing before the strike. YDA Punjab members, however, say that the government’s efforts to replace them are not likely to succeed.

“This is not some bazaar that you can replace doctors on a whim,” said Abu Bakr, a YDA member at Jinnah Hospital in Lahore. “You have to have years of experience and simply hiring recent MBBS graduates will not improve the situation.”

On Sunday morning, Sardar Zulfiqar Khosa, a member of Punjab’s ruling Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz party, met a 17-member delegation of the Pakistan Medical Association regarding the striking doctors in the province. According to the PMA, the organisation fully supported the demands of the YDA Punjab doctors but differed on the method used to attain those demands.

“In the existing service structure, this will be a setback,” said PMA secretary General Izhar Chaudary referring to the decision to hire new doctors. “We will get the new doctors but it will breed new frustration.”

Patients continue to suffer

Medical services at hospitals across Punjab continued to remain patchy as the non-striking doctors struggled to cope with the workload of managing with a severely truncated staff.

Several patients reported not being able to get treatment for hours, even days from doctors. There have been unconfirmed reports of several deaths occurring owing to a lack of medical attention due to the strike, but these could not be independently verified.

Mehmoud Ahmed, a mosque imam from Rahim Yar Khan, had been referred to Lahore Children’s Hospital from the Sheikh Zayed Hospital. He said that he had been at the hospital for three days and the doctors had not been able to diagnose what was wrong with his son. He said beds were empty in many wards and in some places there were 10 beds with only 1 patient.

Punjab government officials, meanwhile, continue to dutifully offer figures on the number of patients treated in the province’s public hospitals, though they did not give numbers of patients who were left untreated, or even a comparison between current figures and comparable periods in the hospitals’ history.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 4th,  2011.

COMMENTS (47)

ali rajput | 12 years ago | Reply a lot of people are blaming doctors. are pointing at us that we are wrong. we should help the public. well all relations are reciprocal.. has public ever helped us ? fine wel end the strike. what will public do to help me ? heck they dont even respect us. they abuse us.. bully us. blame deaths on us. blame everything on us. desperate situations call for desperate measures.. i think its the right time to do this. if you want to blame the death of 48 people on someone.. then blame it on government. because before the strike. doctors have tried with peace many times.. but sorry to say.. people of pakistan are deaf to protests with peace. Doctor doesnot deserve 18000 and its even less in some areas.. Anyways we wont ask you to understand what we feel. because you cant. only we know what we have gone through to achieve the title of a DOCTOR.
ali rajput | 12 years ago | Reply Chief justice claims that government has paid for the doctor's education. He cant even afford the fees. well lets look at the army then. my younger brother is in pma and i think government is expending on his education and training. and hes getting paid 21 thousand rupees per month. hes a first term-er. Just a fresh fsc pass student. Government will pay for his education for 2 years.. and when hel graduate as a lieutenant his pay will be forty thousand. now justify this Mr chief justice. finding lame excuses is not the way out. we are the cream of nation. we are doctors. dont take us as sheep whom you can herd.
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