Patients continued to suffer at Lahore’s Services Hospital as the junior doctors’ protest entered its second consecutive day. The doctors closed the outpatient department (where patients are diagnosed) after the attempted arrest of one of their colleagues by the Punjab Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) yesterday.
According to ACE officials, a departmental team arrested Young Doctors Association (YDA) Vice President Dr Atif Majeed who was accused of embezzlement worth millions of rupees. However, his accomplices including Dr Hamid Butt, Dr Farhan Sahi, and Dr Basharat Gill forced the officials to free him after he had been taken to the vehicle of the ACE.
The ACE officials said that the doctors had damaged and taken its registration documents. The ACE had taken gone to arrest Dr Atif Majeed based on an application filed by the Patient Protection Council of Pakistan Chairman Ghulam Hussain in which he had accused the doctor of corruption.
ACE Director General Brig (r) Muzafar Ali Ranjha said that the department would not be forced by the corrupt and that the rule of law would be ensured at any cost. “The raid was conducted after a thorough inquiry of over a year,” he added. He advised the protesting doctors to surrender themselves before the law and urged them to fight their case in the court instead of taking their toll on the city’s patients.
Patients from Lahore and other nearby cities were forced to seek treatment elsewhere because of the complete shutdown at the hospital. The junior doctors of Services Hospital announced that they would continue their boycott of emergency, indoor, and outpatient departments at one of the province’s major teaching hospitals.
The protesting doctors said that their boycott would be extended to other hospitals as well if the ACE officials were are not arrested. They said that they were not involved in any financial embezzlement and that the government was intimidating YDA leadership through the Anti-Corruption Establishment. The protesting doctors gave an ultimatum of 48 hours to the government for the arrests of ACE officials who had conducted the raid.
According to data obtained by Pakistan Today, not a single patient was checked at Service Hospital’s outpatient department on Wednesday, while 2,478 were checked at Jinnah Hospital , 2,126 at Ganga Ram Hospital, 1,820 at Lahore General Hospital, and 4,935 at Mayo hospital.
