The young doctors serving at public hospitals in Sindh were on strike since January 28. According to a report, a cardiac patient who was brought to Civil Hospital Jacobabad died on Tuesday as there was no doctor to attend to him. On Wednesday almost all the major public hospitals in Karachi had closed down their out-patients departments. Leaders of the Young Doctors Association (YDA) leaders said they had only two demands: give Sindh’s doctors salaries as are being paid in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and ensure regular supply of medicines to the patients at hospitals. There is nothing wrong in these demands.
The Sindh government failed to take up the issue seriously leaving it to bureaucrats in the health department to take care of the doctors’ agitation. Even provincial health minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho betrayed a lack of interest in inviting representatives of the protesting doctors to negotiate with them on their demands. However, on Tuesday evening the health department issued a statement claiming that the salaries of the doctors have been increased as demanded by them. The YDA representatives said they would continue their strike till a notification is issued on acceptance of their demands. However, Sindh chief minister’s adviser Murtaza Wahab announced on Wednesday evening that the government had accepted all demands of doctors and they had called off their strike. It was usual mismanagement on the part of the Sindh government that had delayed the settlement with doctors leaving thousands of patients to suffer.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 31st, 2019.
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