Court asked to declare doctors’ strikes at public hospitals illegal

Petitioner asks SHC to order registration of FIR against doctors at JPMC for death of patients.

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has issued notice to the provincial chief secretary, health and law secretaries, Pakistan Medical Association’s president and city administrator on a petition pleading to declare frequent strikes at public hospitals illegal. The petition also asked the court to order registration of cases against the doctors of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) regarding the death of three patients.

The bench, headed by Justice Ahmed Ali M Sheikh, also issued notice to the provincial advocate general to file the provincial government authorities’ comments by July 16. Rana Faizul Hasan, the general secretary of the United Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, had taken all of them to the court over frequent strikes by the doctors at the JPMC.

He informed the judges on Wednesday that a number of surgeries could not be performed at the hospital due to “illegal strikes by the doctors from June 4 to June 10.” He added that they had also closed down the Out Patient Department following a brawl between the two groups of the doctors.



“A number of patients, who come to the health facility from different areas of the country, could not get proper treatment and some of them had even lost their lives due to lack of medical treatment resulting from the frequent strikes called by the doctors,” the petitioner alleged.

Hasan stated that the doctors, in the name of protest, had politicised the matter and the patients have been left unattended.

The petitioner claimed that the Lahore High Court had already declared such strikes by the doctors in Punjab as illegal and pleaded to the SHC to declare similar strikes in all the public health facilities in Sindh as illegal.

The court has also been requested to take notice of the postponement of the surgeries and to order the registration of an FIR against the doctors regarding the death of the patients. After the preliminary hearing, the bench issued notice to the chief secretary, the secretaries of the health and law secretaries, the Pakistan Medical Association’s president and Advocate General Sindh for July 16.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 15^th, 2013.