With the Punjab government completely silent on the issue, patients became the real victim as the Punjab Young Doctors Association (YDA) kept the outpatient departments of all the hospitals and both the out and in patient departments of the Punjab Institute of Cardiology remained closed on Wednesday.
The Punjab YDA has demanded the restoration of senior doctors suspended from their posts in the wake of deaths caused by medicines from the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC). They had given a timeline to the government regarding the shut down of OPDs across the city hospitals. Patients at the PIC however suffered the most because poor heart patients from across the province come to the premier heart facility. On Wednesday however the loss was immense as around 10 daily surgeries and nearly 100 angiographies and angioplasties could not be performed and patients had to return disappointed.
“We have come from Sialkot for angiography, but we have to return because doctors did not even check us up least of all performing any angiography…we have been told that the government is not listening to the doctors so the operations would not be performed,” Mushtaq Ali, an attendant who was accompanying a patient said.
The government however claimed that the strike was a clear violation of the orders of the Supreme Court. Health Parliamentary Secretary Dr Saeed Elahi said the government was compiling the data of the doctors who were striking and would file a case against them in the court. Meanwhile, the health secretary also held negotiations with the striking doctors but to no avail. The young doctors however said the bureaucracy was the real hurdle in getting the doctors restored because the health secretary had been sent on a leave so the bureaucrats do not want the doctors to be restored without their peer getting the same. They further alleged that the government had put all the blame on innocent doctors while it was trying to hide the real culprits.
“When the report has absolved doctors of all the blame then why are not they being restored?” YDA Spokesperson Dr Nasir said, adding that the strike would continue till their demands were not accepted.
Health Secretary Captain (r) Arif Nadeem however said the SC had issued directions that evidence shall be produced in the case, action shall not be taken against anyone before final proof and doctors will not go on a strike. He said even the former health secretary Jehanzaib khan was appearing before the committee and the bureaucracy had no resentment against the doctors. “If something of this sort happens then even I will resign. The doctors were only suspended because the enquiry needs to be impartial,” he said. Senator Pervaiz Rasheed said the government has had negotiations with the doctors but in vain. He said the doctors were the educated section of the society and they should make sure that the patients do not suffer. He said the judicial enquiry was being done and restoring anyone would give a wrong impression.
‘CANCEL THEIR LICENCES’: An application was also moved in the Lahore High Court for cancellation of licenses of YDA doctors for staging the strike.
The civil miscellaneous (CM) application was filed by Judicial Activism Penal Chairman Advocate Azhar Siddique, terming the strike a step against the fundamental rights of patients. It was filed in pending petition against the deaths caused by reaction of spurious drugs at PIC and other hospitals. The petitioner pleaded that in Lahore alone, 35,000 patients visited the OPDs daily while 100,000 patients from all Punjab approached the provincial metropolis every day and the doctors were playing with their lives. The petitioner has impleaded the government, health secretary, YDA, PMA, PMDC, College of Physician Surgeon of Pakistan (CPSP), Pakistan Medical and Dentist Council (PMDC), King Edward Medical University and University of Health Sciences (UHS. He said the strike was a conspiracy on the part of YDA to create anarchy in the province. He contended that the SC had asked the doctors to not to strike. He said a handful doctors were running the YDA affairs and they had hijacked the city’s hospitals. “This is a conspiracy since all YDA office bearers have got their degrees from abroad and are working on some personal hidden agenda,” he contended.
