On strike: Patients suffer as hospital staffers protest

Employees say protest will continue unless health risk allowance restored.

ISLAMABAD: Patients visiting different major public sector hospitals in Islamabad have been facing difficulties owing to the ongoing protest by doctors and paramedical staffers.

The hospital staffers including doctors have been protesting the abolition of the health risk allowance by the finance division on a daily basis for the last more than a week, resulting in the sufferings of patients visiting different hospitals including the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences and Polyclinic and the National Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine.

Joint Action Committee head Dr Sartaj Ali Khan said that they will continue their protest unless the health risk allowance was restored and other demands were met by the federal government.

“The safety and life of doctors and the paramedical staff is always at risk as they very often come in contact with patients carrying deadly viruses,” said a doctor whishing not to be named. He added that in the past many doctors and nurses have lost their lives after they contracted the lethal virus from hospitalized patients. “If our demands are not met, we will extend the protest and will boycott out-patient departments from the next week,” he said.

Amjad Hussain, a kidney patient at the PIMS, said that while the kidney patients were already suffering due to the faulty dialysis machine at the hospital, the ongoing protest of doctors and nurses has further accentuated their misery.

“The health ministry has turned a blind ear to our sufferings and problems as we are made suffer at the hands of these hospital staff,” he said demanding to take notice of the issue.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 10^th, 2015.