PESHAWAR: No end in sight to the agonies of poor patients, as Health workers including doctors, paramedics, nursing staff and Class-IV workers continued to strike across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for 41st consecutive day on Thursday.Patients have been facing serious hardships as the doctors have constantly been boycotting their duties in the government-run hospitals since September 27. According to representatives of the doctors, they had been holding meetings with secretary Health in the past several weeks but couldn’t resolve the issues.“The secretary Health unwillingly wanted to convey to us that he is helpless to resolve any of our issues and the only person who is having all the powers is Dr Nausherwan Burki,” said a representative of the doctors.A group of senior doctors, which recently negotiated between the government and the protesting doctors, also claimed that the secretary Health had told them that Dr Nausherwan Burki was the main hurdle in accepting demands of the Health workers.All the Health workers on the call of Grand Health Alliance (GHA) have been on strike since September 27. They had paralysed Health services in the public sector hospitals of the province. They had been protesting against the Regional Health Authority (RHA) and District Health Authority (DHA), which the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly passed recently.The alliance is an umbrella organisation of all the associations of doctors, paramedics, nursing staff and Class-IV workers of the public sector hospitals. The Peshawar High Court had long declared Health as essential services, meaning that the Health workers would not deny services to the patients. However, neither the honourable court nor the provincial government took note of the sufferings of the patients.The doctors and other Health workers had stopped attending patients at the outpatient-departments, wards, operation theatres. They also refused to provide services to the patients in the pathology and radiology departments of the government hospitals.According to senior medical consultants, hundreds of patients had died in the past two months due to lack of services in the hospitals. “The court should ask for data of the patients who died in the past two months due to lack of services. I believe some of the hospitals don’t keep data of the patients who have died due to lack of services as they don’t want to be blamed for the loss of human lives,” said a senior medical consultant in Khyber Teaching Hospital.
11-08-2019, 01:53 PM
Health workers? strike in KPenters 41st day
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