Doctors’ demo makes motorists suffer: Arrest of Services surgeon
The road blockade between 8.30am and 4pm not only caused a massive traffic jam on the main road and its adjoining arteries, but landed many a patient in difficulty in reaching one of the major health facilities in the city.
The Shadman police on Thursday registered a case against Senior Registrar Dr Shafqat, Dr Saif, Dr Kashif, Dr Waqas and nurse Asma of the Services Hospital under section 302 of PPC on the charge of showing negligence that led to the death of a patient. They later arrested Dr Shafqat.
Among others who bore the brunt of the doctors’ protest were students, especially the girls, who had to wait on the bus stops for longer time to get conveyances. Similarly, the people who were to collect their children from schools got stuck in the long queues.
Although wardens remained engaged in diverting the traffic, all roads leading to Jail Road were choked. A traffic snarl-up was witnessed along the canal. The protesting doctors, however, showed generosity in ‘clearing way’ for ambulances.
The patients were provided with treatment in the emergency wards of the Services Hospital, but those in other wards were ignored by the doctors and the paramedical staff; the latter also accompanied their bosses in the protest.
As no senior officer of the health department ‘bothered’ to reach the spot to convince the doctors to go back to work, some motorists and pedestrians had face-offs with the protesters. However, it did not take the ugly look.
The police remained a silent spectator while provincial labour minister Ashraf Sohna and an MPA reached there and lent sympathetic hearing to the doctors, but could not assure them that the murder charges against the surgeon and three other doctors and a nurse would be withdrawn through the government’s intervention.
When the protesting doctors were convinced that they had registered their protest (with the authorities concerned) around 4pm, they returned to the hospital and announced that they would resume their protest on Friday morning if the case was not withdrawn.
Model Town SP Rai Ijaz told Dawn that Dr Shafqat had been arrested while raids were on to arrest the other nominated accused. He said the police registered the FIR on the complaint of Nisar Awan who held the doctors and the nurse responsible for the death of his brother Ibrar.
The SP quoted Nisar as saying that they had not taken care of Ibrar and administered him ‘stale’ blood.
Ikram Awan, uncle of the deceased, told this reporter that Ibrar, 23, came from Manserha to earn his livelihood. He worked in a bakery in Shadman. On Aug 30, while returning from the bakery at 1.30am, a speeding vehicle hit him and he was shifted to the Services Hospital where doctors asked for blood for operation as he had a fracture in his leg.
Ikram said the blood they bought from a private blood bank in Mozang was stale and the doctors without checking its quality administered it to the accident victim that instantly resulted in his (Ibrar’s) death.
“We then visited the Shadman police station but they ‘flatly’ refused to lodge an FIR,” he said and added that now the case had been registered on the intervention of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif.
An inquiry team, headed by the health secretary, which was constituted by the chief minister, had also pointed out the negligence of the doctors in question in the case. The owner of the blood bank has also been arrested.
A senior doctor of the Service Hospital, however, claimed that Ibrar had multiple injuries and the doctors on duty tried their best to save his life but to no avail.
Ibrar is survived by two brothers and as many sisters. The chief minister reportedly has ordered providing job to one of his brothers.
SP Rai Ijaz hinted that the doctors might try to reconcile with the family and the FIR might be quashed in a couple of days.