When ‘saviors’ become butchers

Posted on April 2 2011 by Claudia Carson

Op-Ed: When ‘saviors’ become butchers Lahore – Forty children have died and more patients are at risk of dying while thousands are suffering because doctors in Punjab are on strike. The doctors want an increase in pay and they don’t care if their patients keep dying. It’s been a month now that government-employed junior doctors in Punjab, those seeing patients in government hospitals, are on a strike, not seeing patients, on account of their unfulfilled demands of a substantial increase in salary and regularization of those doctors working on contracts etc. Since Thursday, the situation has turned into a shocking emergency as doctors have also stopped serving in emergency and labor rooms. This “give-me-money” protest by the doctors against the provincial government has so far cost over 40 hospitalized children their lives, the latest being a 13-year-old girl who died in Rawalpindi, twin city to the federal capital Islamabad, while suffering from respiratory problem and heart disease. Media has been questioning whether the doctors or the provincial government, or both should be held responsible for the deaths caused by the doctors’ strike and the government’s continued refusal in increasing the doctors’ pay. What I strongly feel like writing about is the general, clichéd title of “savior” Saviors, we call them here, but “professionals” they are determined to prove themselves, and their profession is to cash their need by the public, to make the maximum possible money out of their need. And they are not needed by the higher social class, not by the Sharif family (political leaders of Punjab) whose members go to London, UK, for treatment. But these junior doctors, whose best skill is prescribing anti-allergic or analgesics to an illiterate or quasi-literate populace, are in an inhuman rush to make money. Themselves coming from a class that is imperceptibly above the one they are serving, these “rupee-worshippers” clad as medial doctors can’t see the writing, dying patients or the rent hearts of the patients’ families, because they are blinded by day dreams of traveling in air-conditioned cars and enjoying meals in fancy restaurants with their families. It is common knowledge now that governance in all the units forming Pakistan is way below what might be termed satisfactory. In Punjab province, which (ironically) has a claim to goo governance, the situation is much worse than other provinces—with crime, mismanagement, and corrupting knowing no bounds. But does that allow a public servant, and particularly a “savior”, to exploit the same public, even costing them their lives, simply because they are not getting enough to buy cars and live in luxury? Reason and humanity would shake at this question. What won’t be shaken is the dead conscience of our “saviors” who must save their right to luxury at the expanse of the blood of helpless people. As the doctors are leaving in swarms for Saudi Arabia, after resigning from their posts, for well-paid jobs, the greatest failure of the provincial government apparent to the public is that it has failed to terminate and blacklist these actively aggressive “saviors” who studied in institutions running on the tax-payers’ money so that they might save the miserable poor patients when they are lying in hospitals at the mercy of their “saviors”. The government has failed pathetically as it has not, even after a month of medical butchery, mustered the courage to blacklist the protesting villains, ban them from leaving the country, and cancel their medical degrees. Above all, the government has failed in declaring these doctors officially as “butchers” not “saviors”. This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com

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