A lovers’ quarrel

PTI came into power with the slogan of change for doctors; 10 months into the PTI’s rule and we see no such change

Hospitals have been reduced to battlefields. The doctors’ community of Pakistan has woken up to what they describe as a ‘triple threat’: unjust government policies, public outrage and strong media opposition.

Doctors, for the public, are raucous obstructives. The government and the media— according to the doctors’ community— have donned the roles of an inconsiderate figure and someone who fans fire, respectively.

In a fresh wave of events, doctors in K-P province of Pakistan have once again stopped their services on the grounds that a senior doctor (a surgeon in Khyber Teaching Hospital) was verbally abused and beaten up by the guards of K-P health minister— one of the many assault incidents against doctors in ‘Naya’ Pakistan.

When the demand for a FIR against the health minister and his guards was left unentertained, the doctors of K-P closed down outpatient departments (OPDs) across the province. The government responded with a deadline for the doctors to resume their duties or to meet dire consequences in the form of departmental action and removal from service. This provocation was met by Punjab doctors sending out a similar message of shutting down hospitals across Punjab, an act of unity with the doctors of K-P.

This long drawn-out war between doctors and the government intensified during the last tenure of the PML-N. The current PTI government came into power with the slogan of change for doctors who no longer would be at the end of unfair health policies, would feel safe and would be properly compensated for their services. Ten months into the PTI’s rule and we see no such change in government attitude, policies or even faces for that matter.

The only demand of Pakistan’s medical fraternity for long has been the provision of safe hospital working environment for which they demand a law to be passed by parliament.

Media, a strong influencer and shaper of public opinion, has generously handed out negative press in favour of doctors. As a result, patients now enter hospitals with a hostile mindset, considering doctors as enemies who will loot them at every opportunity. This has harmed the sensitive doctor-patient relationship.

If doctors really are minting money immorally or allegedly fulfilling nefarious agendas, as claimed by the media and in turn by the public, then evidence should be brought forward after which legal action should be sought. Taking the law directly into your own hands and opening up skulls with butts of rifles, breaking bones and harassing pregnant on-duty doctors without proof of any wrongdoing is totally unjustified. It is for this reason that doctors across the country have been demanding the formulation and implementation of workplace safety laws for years.

The patience of the medical community will soon run out and we will all end up in a national health crisis where all outpatient and emergency medical services will be axed.

Another recent dispute is on the MTI (Medical Teaching Institutions) Act, which doctors in Punjab think would greatly burden Pakistan’s poor patient population as they would have to pay large sums for OPD services, laboratory and radiological investigations. Hospitals would be run by a board of governors made up of non-medical professionals, who doctors think would be unqualified for the post. Under the MTI Act, doctors would be sent to render services in their home districts’ peripheries which according to doctors is a waste of manpower because, for example, a surgeon would be useless in such peripheral health centres where the facility of an operation theatre is unavailable.

For what has now become a lovers’ quarrel must end. An article published in the New York Post suggested one small word that can instantly end an argument. That word is ‘ouch’. If one (doctors) admits and expresses that something or someone has hurt him/her, the other party (government) is likely to back off.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 22^nd, 2019.

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