Staff Reporter
Lahore
Dozens of doctors and nurses have launched a hunger strike demanding adequate protective equipment for frontline staff treating coronavirus patients, the lead organiser of the protest said on Saturday.
Health workers have complained for weeks that the country’s hospitals are suffering chronic shortages of safety gear, prompting the arrest of more than 50 doctors who called for more supplies in Quetta earlier this month. Frontline staff have been left vulnerable, with more than 150 medical workers testing positive for the virus nationwide, according to the Young Doctors’ Association in worst-hit Punjab. The protesters have kept working in their hospitals while taking turns to demonstrate outside the health authority offices in Lahore. “We do not intend on stopping until the government listens to our demands. They have been consistently refusing to adhere to our demands,” said Dr Salman Haseeb. Haseeb heads the province’s Grand Health Alliance, which is organising the protest, and he said he had not eaten since April 16.
“We are on the frontline of this virus and if we are not protected then the whole population is at risk,” he told AFP. The alliance said about 30 doctors and nurses were on hunger strike, with up to 200 medical staff joining them each day for demonstrations.
Punjab’s health workers union is supporting the alliance and also demanding adequate quarantine conditions for medical staff. Nearly three dozen doctors, nurses and paramedics contracted the virus in one hospital in Multan, while seven members of a doctor’s family were infected in Lahore, it added.
“We are simply demanding justice for our community,” said doctor and YDA chairman Khizer Hayat. Hospital staff would not escalate their protest by walking off the job, he added. Punjab health department officials told AFP that hospitals had now been provided with adequate protection gear after an earlier “backlog” was resolved.
Meanwhile, the Lahore high Court on Saturday released its written verdict in
a petition filed by doctors working as medical officers in Punjab hospitals, seeking personal protective equipment and additional financial relief from the government. In its w ritten order, authored by LHC Chief Justice Mohammad Qasim Khan, the court not only threw out the petition, but also ordered the petitioners to cover the costs while allowing the Punjab health department and the provincial government to take action against them for any laws they may have broken and for “bringing a bad name to the institution”. According to the order, the petitioners pleaded for the provision of protective equipment for all health professionals combating the spread of the novel coronavirus but records shared with the court showed not one of the five petitioners had been assigned duties related to coronavirus. It added that one of the petitioners was posted for a day to screen virus patients, for which he was given complete protective gear. “For what has been stated above, the instant writ petition on the face of it appears to be a malafide move and an attempt to get easy social media projection for no solid and sound basis thereof,” read the order. Accepting the Punjab government’s stance that PPEs are only provided to doctors treating coronavirus patients, the court also noted in its order that several developed countries were also facing a shortage of protective gear in the health crisis that has emerged from the pandemic. The court said it would be unfair to give a verdict against the Punjab government when it had been taking effective measures to ensure the safety of doctors, adding that doctors as public servants also had a responsibility towards the state. “If for all good reasons, we keep doctors on the highest pedestal, at the same time we cannot allow all and sundry to play havoc in the society by spreading chaos through unauthentic information or levelling allegations against the state or its institutions,” the LHC order read. The court also noted that the pleas by the doctors, including the financial relief package, were directly related to their terms of service, for which they have means of redressing in the form of hierarchies in the health department. Without approaching other modes of redressal granted to them, public servants cannot move the high court with a constitutional petition, the chief justice wrote.
