Doctors’ protests

Just a few weeks back, we had raised white flags for doctors, and asked all persons in uniform to stage a salute for them. Now, just a few days later, the policemen who had saluted them baton-charged doctors collected at the Punjab Health Secretariat in Lahore, with nurses and paramedics – as part of the Grand Health Alliance – detained them in small rooms and threatened them. Doctors and paramedical staff are right at the forefront of our fight against Covid-19. At this crucial juncture of a make-or-break situation, we need to protect our health staff more than anybody else. And here we are: with the police thrashing our doctors, right at the Punjab Health Secretariat. And what led to that? Just the doctors demanding protective kits and restoration of their suspended colleagues. Are these crimes serious enough to elicit this brutal response from the Punjab police? It has been nearly four months now that the novel coronavirus became a health concern in China and then the world over. We have had more than enough time to procure protective kits both nationally and internationally. The total number of practising doctors in Pakistan is around two hundred thousand for a population of nearly 220 million. And we can’t even provide them protective kits and treat them with dignity and respect.

The doctors in Lahore had been on a hunger strike too in a camp outside the office of the secretary of Specialized Healthcare and Medical Education. This is not an issue that only our doctors are facing in Lahore. Nurses and paramedical staff are also working under nearly the same working conditions and then being treated shabbily. There have been reports from Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa too revealing the dangerous conditions in which health workers are performing their duties in isolation wards and quarantine centres, while consistently asking for protective gear.

The NDMA has been coordinating the procurement and distribution of these PPE (personal protective equipment). There is a need to be transparent in this matter, and disclose to the public how and where these PPEs have been given. There have been conflicting reports about the location and number of the PPEs distributed. This information should be in the public domain so that we can decide how justified or unjustified the doctors’ demands are. Similarly, keeping our qualified doctors suspended at a time when we need them the most is not a laughing matter but a tragedy. Our authorities keep complaining that the doctors who get degrees in Pakistan prefer to leave the country and find work overseas. If this is the way we treat our doctors we tend to lose our right to complain. This is a serious matter that should be resolved at the highest level. Those who thrash doctors must be brought to book, the PPE must be given at once, and the suspended doctors be restored to their duties without delay. There have been claims that the doctors are attempting to demand a raise in salaries. The protesting members of the GHA strongly maintain this is completely untrue; a malicious campaign intended to discredit them. There is something very wrong with all this. This is no time to go to war against doctors. They alone can save us. In turn, they deserve the best support we can offer them, including more fervent efforts on the part of the government to secure PPE equipment and make sure it reaches all those on the front lines.