LAHORE: Young doctors grouped together to protest against the ongoing VIP culture at public hospitals.
The group demanded an end to what they called preferential treatment of VIPs at hospitals after the death of Zohra Bibi. The young professionals said that public hospitals neglect the poor and prioritise the powerful. They said that poor patients often do not get hospital beds and medicines and have to wait very long to access medical facilities. The VIP patients, on the other hand, are immediately provided beds and medicines, they pointed out.
They further said that the General Hospital had 110 beds in the emergency ward but they received more than 2,000 patients daily. No major hospital had been built in the city since 1995, they added.
They called on the Punjab Chief Minister to provide financial assistance for upgrading the hospitals instead of handing out compensation to victims.
Jinnah Hospital’s medical superintendent and three professors were suspended following the death of Zohra Bibi, a 60-year-old kidney patient who was not given a bed in the hospital and died on its cold floor earlier this month.
Punjab CM Shahbaz Sharif had visited the patient’s family in Kasur and handed over a financial compensation cheque worth one million rupees to the bereaved family.
