YDA: LHC directs govt to keep hospitals running

LAHORE:

Justice Umar Ata Bandial has directed the Punjab government to ensure that healthcare facilities at all hospitals remain available and to submit a report on a petition seeking action against the Young Doctors Association for going on strike in the city’s hospitals. 

The judge asked the law officer appearing on behalf of the government to submit a report by April 23. He also directed the LHC registrar’s office to put the petition before another bench as he will be on leave on April 23.

The court was hearing an application from Judicial Activism Panel chairman Muhammad Azhar Siddique for attachment to an already pending petition he had moved regarding the strike by doctors last year in a protest for better pay.

Siddique said in the application that the Supreme Court had barred doctors from going on strike. He said the doctors’ professional oath did not allow them to deprive any patient of treatment, but the YDA had closed outdoor wards in teaching hospitals in the city, denying treatment to 40,000 patients. He said that dozens of people had died during the previous doctors’ strike aand more were being affected by the current strike.

He asked that the doctors’ licences be cancelled. The YDA is on strike in protest against Health Department orders for the transfer of 450 doctors.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 17^th, 2012.