Taking great exception to apathy of the provincial government and law enforcement agencies to provide protection to doctors in Karachi, different organisations of doctors have jointly unveiled the future protest plan on Wednesday.
The plan of action was jointly unveiled by the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) Center & Karachi, Sindh Doctors’ Welfare Association (SDWA), Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (PIMA), Medical Aid Committee, College of Family Medicine and Private Hospital Association and all societies of doctors’ bodies leadership at PMA House.
Pakistan Medical Association (PMA), Karachi, President Prof Dr Idrees Adhi said targeted killing of doctors was going on for more than two decades and it had claimed over 150 lives of their colleagues. He said the PMA as mother organisation had been raising voice to stop that brutality. He said 17 innocent doctors lost lives in target killing incidents in 2014 and four in first 20 days of 2015.
He said the PMA had knocked almost every door to get at least some relief, but to no avail. He said doctors had tried their best to avoid going for strikes and create hardships to the poor patients but keeping in view the ineffective role of police and up to a certain extent the law enforcing agencies and apathy of the present day government, poor doctors had no other choice but to register their protests.
He said now the PMA in collaboration with different doctor organisations was unveiling its future protest plans – in first step doctors will observe black day with black armbands and hoisting flags at all public and private hospitals with complete closure of OPDs on February 2, 2015. He said all general practitioners clinics would be closed on the protest day.
Prof Adhi said if the authorities still remained unmoved, then the sit-ins and hunger strikes would be observed in close premises like PMA or at different hospitals. He said the sit-ins and hunger strikes would be carried out at public places.
Dr Fahim Bhatti, Dr Nisar Ali Shah, Dr Ghulam Mujtaba Memon, Mirza Ali Azhar, Dr SM Qaiser Sajjad, Dr Humayun Furrakh, Dr Junaid Shah, Dr Qazi Wasiq, Dr Saqib Ansari and Ghafoor Shoro were also present on this occasion.
