Lady doctors demand strict lockdown enforcement

By Mukhtar Alam
(Pakistan News & Features Services)

Taking the cue from their male colleagues in the profession, a group of female medical practitioners, on April 24, said that hospitals providing care to the coronavirus patients were not in a position to admit more such patients in view of shortage of intensive care units including the ventilators and relevant staff. 

Speaking at a media briefing at the Karachi Press Club, they said that the diseases crisis was overwhelming and solution lied in the lockdown, which needed to be strictly enforced by the government and seriously followed by the citizens. The speakers included Dr Safia Zafar, Dr Nusrat Shah, Dr Nighat Shah, Dr Razia Korejo and others. 

They reckoned that it was government’s prime duty to protect its citizen and implement preventive measures everywhere from markets to departmental stores and from playgrounds to religious centres. 

“All over the world it is seen that only these countries are free of disease or have very few patients who strictly did the lockdown from the discovery of first case in the community,” they remarked.

They pleaded that that the doctors were under enormous pressure as cases were on increase in Karachi and rest of the country. “Sometimes the doctors have to work without protective gears and other intensive care facilities while providing care to severely ill coronavirus patients,” they added and urged the people to listen to them and stay at home to avert the disease. 

“It’s very heartbreaking that some of our doctors, nurses and health workers have lost their lives and every day we go to hospital with fear of having positive test and thinking that some of us will die,” they regretted.