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 yesterday.
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 the city of 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 (YDA) in worst-hit Punjab province.
Several doctors and nurses have died from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, including a 26-year-old physician who had recently started his career, and an official told AFP that a specialist at a state-run hospital died from the disease yesterday.
The protesters have kept working in their hospitals while taking turns to demonstrate outside the health authority offices in provincial capital 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 doctor Salman Haseeb.
He heads the province’s Grand Health Alliance, which is organising the protest, and 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 worker union is supporting the alliance.
Nearly three dozen doctors, nurses and paramedics contracted the virus in one hospital in the city of Multan, while seven members of a doctor’s family were infected in Lahore, it said.
“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.
Provincial health department officials told AFP that hospitals had now been provided with adequate protective gear after an earlier “backlog” was resolved.
Earlier this month the Punjab government announced that frontline workers would be awarded a pay bonus and life insurance.
Almost half of the nearly 12,000 confirmed Covid-19 infections across Pakistan have been recorded in Punjab.
The number of infections in the country is believed to be far higher because of a lack of testing in the impoverished country of 215mn.
Shehzad Akbar, medical director at a public hospital in Peshawar, told AFP that an ear, nose and throat specialist working on the Covid-19 ward died yesterday of the disease.
The doctor’s death prompted renewed calls for tougher government action and complete lockdowns to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
The holy month of Ramadan officially began in Pakistan yesterday, with concerns that the light restrictions imposed on mosque gatherings will not stop a rapid spread of the virus.
Medical workers across the world have been grappling with shortages of vital safety equipment since the start of the pandemic.
In a development yesterday, the Lahore High Court (LHC) released its written verdict in a petition filed by doctors working as medical officers in Punjab hospitals, seeking personal protective equipment (PPE) and additional financial relief from the government.
In its written order, authored by LHC Chief Justice Mohamed 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 developed countries are also facing a shortage of protective gear.
The court said that 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.
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.