Inquiry on patient deaths yet to begin

Patients who died or suffered during strike by doctors are yet to be located.

LAHORE:

The government has yet to start an investigation into the circumstances of the strike by junior doctors at government hospitals and to assign blame for the patient deaths during the protest, even as a court deadline for the results of such an inquiry approaches.

Lahore High Court Chief Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry on April 8 directed Chief Secretary Nasir Mehmoud Khose to set up a committee and to make sure that it completed the inquiry in 15 days. “The investigation is yet to commence,” Advocate Gul Zaman, counsel for the petitioner, told The Express Tribune on Friday.

He said that a committee had not even been formed to start investigations and the families of patients who had died during the strike had not been contacted. Asked if the inquiry committee had been formed, Information Secretary Mohyuddin Wani said he would look into it.

Zaman said hospitals did not have a complete record of its patients during the strike and so it was difficult to find those who had potentially valid claims of negligence. He said the only way forward was some sort of public request for patients to come forward themselves.

Zaman said the LHC assistant registrar, Waqas Dar, had received the notification for the setting up of the inquiry committee. Dar said it was not his responsibility to send the notification forward, but of the registrar. He refused to comment further.

Pakistan Medical Association Lahore president Dr Muhammed Tanveer Anwar condemned the delay. “Ideally a judicial commission should have been set up immediately by the Lahore High Court to look at patient issues during the strike. It seems that the government is trying to cover up the details of the case,” he said.

A senior doctor privy to developments agreed that identifying patients would be a difficulty. He said the report would not be completed by April 25.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 24^th, 2011.