The GMOA is at it again. After expending its energies on the anti-SAITM issue and other things extraneous to the medical profession, government doctors after a long hiatus are back in business. Plunging the health sector into chaos and holding innocent patients- whose interest they always claim to be uppermost in their hearts - to ransom, the doctors yesterday launched yet another strike in Government hospitals islandwide in a bid to get the government to toe their line. It must be remembered that the rich and even middle class patients can afford to go to private hospitals, but Government hospitals are the sole hope of poor patients.
The doctors say, the 24 hour strike is meant to get the Government to meet eight demands of their union, two of which is to lay down Minimum Standards for Medical Education and to put a halt to the minister’s attempt to amend the Service Minute of doctors by which the GMOA claims, unqualified persons could enter the medical profession. GMOA Assistant Secretary Dr. Naveen De Zoya told this newspaper that the GMOA was not demanding any salary increases but their strike is solely aimed at protecting patients.
On the face of it, it appears that the doctors are all out to improve the quality of the medical profession and thus provide quality treatment to patients by demanding exacting standards from those who enter the medical profession, by their demand that a Minimum Standard be set up. However, by resorting to strike action they are acting at complete variance with their altruistic principals of taking a stand on behalf of the patients. On the contrary they are plunging the sick and feeble into further trauma and misery by their insensitive act of denying treatment, which is a mockery of the Hippocratic Oath.
Besides, to any reasonable mind, the issues raised by the GMOA are not of Earth shattering magnitude to warrant using innocent patients as a battering ram to win over demands. The patients cannot be held responsible for policy clashes between the Health Minister and Government doctors. These are matters that are above the ken of the suffering patients whose immediate need is succour and relief from their suffering, which they cannot obtain when doctors refuse to treat them over disputes with the minister.
The GMOA, as is now the usual practice, has asserted that the strike will not affect child maternity, cancer and kidney hospitals and the Accident Service, clearly in an attempt to soften the blow. But don’t these doctors realize that an outpatient who visits a Government hospital may be afflicted with a critical aliment that demands prompt attention, which bereft of emergency treatment could cost his/her life on the long run ? In that sense, aren’t the doctors who are fighting for high standards in the medical profession so as not to endanger patients’ lives are equally culpable, by default?
Of course, it is election time and the GMOA which makes no bones as to where its political loyalties lie, certainly is girding its loins. It was common in recent times to see top members of the GMOA at the Eliya and Viyath Maga events that were seen as launching pads for Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Presidential candidacy. Why, in the days following the October 26 constitutional coup, the GMOA went so far as to write to the embassies of the Western countries, which, understandably, found fault with the power grab, to recognize the illegal Government. The GMOA President is currently having a case pending against him before the Supreme Court, for Contempt, for casting aspersions on the judiciary during a Trade Union meeting opposite the Fort Railway Station where he also excoriated two Government Ministers - questionable conduct for a member of the medical profession, to say the least.
Hence, the doctors’ strike could well be the harbinger of a rash of work stoppages in the run up to the big poll, which witnessed a pause in the immediate aftermath of Easter Sunday bombings. The GMOA, as in the past, is bound to find common cause with agitations that have nothing to do with the medical profession or patient welfare. And true to form, pro-Rajapaksa television channels will be at the scene to dutifully record empty Government hospitals and patients sprawled in agonized postures on empty hospital benches. Interesting days are ahead, though not amusing to the suffering patients who may have to brace themselves for more doctors’ strikes.
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