Patients suffer as OPDs remain closed for third day

Senior doctors asked to cover for the protesting doctors, says RMC principal.

RAWALPINDI:

Young doctors in the three major public hospitals of the city boycotted their duties for the third straight day. They are demanding that the Punjab health department regularise their service structure and revoke the transfer of 671 doctors from urban to rural health facilities.

Outpatient departments (OPDs) of Holy Family Hospital, Benazir Bhutto Hospital and District Headquarter Hospital remained closed, as per the decision announced by the Young Doctors Association (YDA) last Sunday.

YDA representative Dr Waleed Abbasi said the young medical practitioners will only attend patients in the emergency department, adding that they will soon set up medical camps in open areas of the hospital to facilitate emergency patients.

Rawalpindi Medical College (RMC) Principal Dr Musaqad Khan said that in the absence of young doctors, senior doctors have been asked to attend patients in the OPDs. The decision, he said, has not stirred up an issue with the young doctors so far.

Association for Patients Welfare Society Rawalpindi President Sharjeel Mir urged the government and YDA to resolve their issues.

He said that patients have been denied treatment in the three public hospitals for the past three days and that “their lives are being endangered.”

YDA claims that the majority of doctors have been serving in BPS-17 and BPS-18 for the past many years in the absence of any promotion structure.

It claims that under the current policy, only 1% of doctors serving in BPS-17 will reach BPS-20.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 19^th, 2012.