No easy answers

Several patients have died because doctors want better working conditions and pay

As many as six children have died at government-run hospitals in Dadu and Mithi of Sindh after doctors there boycotted their duties. Doctors are protesting against what they claim the Sindh government’s failure to raise their salaries and perks to the level of doctors in neighbouring Punjab.

Patients, who just wanted their sick relations to be treated, staged a protest of their own in front of a protest camp set up by doctors outside the outpatients department at the Liaquat University Hospital in Hyderabad.

Health officials invited representatives of the doctors for parleys but the doctors refused the offer of talks, stating that their issues and demands have already been discussed and the government had assured that a notification would be issued to resolve them. But the government, doctors claim, has failed to keep its promises.

Even though doctors in Sindh want to be treated on a par with their counterparts in Punjab, it seems they have not learnt any lessons from the massive Young Doctors Association strikes in Punjab a few years ago. Back then, several patients had died because doctors wanted better working conditions and pay.

This underlines one of the major problems of our public health system which fails to adequately reward doctors for their efforts while doctors have found a potent weapon in strikes to beat the government with.

There are no easy answers to this conundrum. One thing is clear, however, that doctors are bound by their Hippocratic Oath to save the lives of patients whether they are paid or not. If we are to save the sanctity of the profession, the doctors must be reminded of their oath while the government — if it has committed to increase salaries and perks— must honour its promises.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th, 2019.

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