Daily Times

The Young Doctors Association’s (YDA’s) strike against the transfer of 45 postgraduate trainee doctors and medical officers of Services Hospital by the Punjab Health Department has continued for a week, with no signs of its end in sight so far. Some senior doctors, instead of facilitating resolution of the dispute, are said to have joined the strike, thereby making an early end to the crisis harder still. The strikers have meanwhile threatened to expand the strike across the province — an eventuality that must be prevented through talks. As both sides are sticking to their guns, the only loser will be the low-income patients who cannot afford treatment at state-of-the art private medical complexes. In fact, healthcare and education have over the decades been turned into the biggest ‘money-spinners’. Systemic funds starvation of Pakistan’s social sector, which incidentally lubricates the economy’s wheels with the help of an educated and healthy workforce, has done great harm to our country. Millions of man-hours are lost to the economy due to sickness or semi-sickness, thanks to the under-funded public health sector. Thanks to the insensitivity of the authorities, resort to heavy-handed measures against doctors and other medical staff has become the norm, which is very unfortunate. The provincial government high-ups must help resolve the crisis before it gathers ominous proportions.

A lawyer, while petitioning the Lahore registry of the Supreme Court to order deployment of army doctors, has sought directions for penal action against the striking doctors. The Supreme Court has already expressed its disapproval during an earlier doctors’ strike. The petitioner has sought the court’s direction to debar the doctors from observing strikes, under the rules governing essential services. This is one side of the picture. The other is the country’s abysmal doctor-to-patient ratio. En bloc dismissal or removal of striking doctors, in whose education the state has invested heavily, would be a great folly, as doctors and other professionals don’t grow on trees! The best option for the Health Department babus as well as the striking doctors would be to engage in cool-headed talks to arrive at a consensual solution. The senior doctors must play a mediatory role to relieve the sufferings of poor patients. *