FAISALABAD: Senior doctors on Thursday stayed away from their official duties at the outpatient departments of the Allied and the DHQ hospitals perhaps due to backlash from Young Doctors Association [although they were not part of the strike announced by the YDAJ.

Doctors have even extended the dates of surgeries and they observed a full-day strike against the Medical Teaching Institutions (MTI) Act.

Owing to the strike, patients suffered a lot as the doctors did not check even a single patient at the OPDs and converged on the road for protest.

The OPD of Surgical Unit-1, which is headed by the Faisalabad Medical University Vice Chancellor Dr Zafar Chaudhry, also observed strike and extended the surgery date of the patients adding totheir woes. Hundreds of patients visit these infirmaries daily for treatment.

The patients on Thursday kept requesting the doctors to examine them as scores of them had travelled from for-flung areas.

However, doctors paid no heed to their requests and remained present outside the OPDs where they also staged demonstrations along with paramedics and nurses of the hospitals against the MTI Act.

They also chanted slogans against the government for introducing the act which, according to them, would create problems for the masses rather to facilitate them.

Sources said senior doctors said the MTI was not the issue of YDA alone, it would affect the entire community and the patients as well.

Secondly, they said they could not check patients in the absence of the young doctors as they (YDA) had a history of misbehaviour with the senior faculty.