PESHAWAR: The protest by members of Grand Health Alliance at public sector hospitals has reshaped the functioning of the health facilities as patients are now being admitted through emergency for normal ailments as outpatients department (OPD) stay closed owing to 40-day long boycott of medics.

The OPDs, from where patients get slip on entrance to hospitals, have been shut since the strike was launched by the employees of health department against Regional and District Health Authorities Act, 2019. The strike has forced people to get hospitalised and operated upon through accident and emergency departments, which are meant for critical patients only.

The accident and emergency department (AED), operation theatres and diagnostic services are functional as usual as the GHA members receive seriously-ill or injured people. The protest has affected services in every ward and specialty of the hospitals as statistics with regard to OPD, operations and other procedures have gone down.

Patients get admitted through emergency dept for treatment of normal ailments

The city’s hospitals where bed occupancy remained 100 per cent prior to the strike have now empty beds owing to closure of OPD from where, people requiring routine surgeries or other procedures, are admitted.

Now most normal patients get slips from AED in some hospitals and go to relevant wards for admission. The doctors also conduct small scale OPD in wards from where cold patients are sent home after examination.

“We have 50 per cent bed occupancy and most of the people have been admitted through AED,” said a senior surgeon at one of the medical teaching institution. He said that patients with normal diseases were seen in wards because sitting in OPD was tantamount to inviting wrath of their colleagues.

The OPDs, meant to receive patients, have become places of public meetings of the GHA members, who argue that the new law is meant to render their services contractual and enhance the cost of services at government hospital and deprive people of free care.

Lady Reading Hospital has managed to keep its OPDs open. It receives at least 3,000 patients but other MTIs cannot do so on their own. Other MTIs receive OPD patients directly in wards from where they get treatment.

A senior doctor said that opening of OPDs was dangerous during the strike. He said that they could not take up quarrels with the GHA leaders, who were protesting against the government policy with which the MTIs had no concern.

“How the MTIs can be closed against RDHA because the law is supposed to be enforced at the district level hospitals and we have nothing to do with it,” he questioned.

The ongoing strike began from LRH where police baton charged the employees who had gathered there from the hospitals of the province before a scheduled protest march towards the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on September 27.

Prof Nausherwan Burki, chairman of the Prime Minister Task Force, has been spearheading the PTI’s health reforms process in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since 2013. He is also head of Board of Governors of LRH, the first institution to implement the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act 2015.

The GHA alleges that Prof Burki is also behind RDHA 2019.

On Monday, Dr Burki visited LRH and left amid small protest by the members of the alliance. The administration had deployed scores of police for his security. A surgeon at Khyber Teaching Hospital in May ahs pelted eggs at him. He held detailed meetings in LRH and health secretariat, according to sources.

Published in Dawn, November 5th, 2019