PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkwha Doctors` Council, a joint forum of different groups of medics, has expressed serious reservations over the planned formation of district health authority and asked the health department to make consultation with all stakeholders before presentation the proposed law in the provincial assembly to avert any possible conflict.

Addressing a news conference at Peshawar Press Club on Thursday, convener of the council, Dr Sirajul Islam, said that doctors had serious reservations over the draft bill as it was finalised without taking them and other stakeholders on board.

Flanked by representatives of different unions of doctors, he urged the government to make public details of the proposed law otherwise doctors would announce a series of protests in the province.

Dr Siraj said that formation of district health authority was meant to privatise the public sector hospitals at district level and run them through private boards. The hospitals, he said, would generate revenue for themselves through high fee at OPD and otherdepartments that was sheer injustice with poor patients.

Dr Siraj said that transferring of state-run health facilities into private corporate institutions was unacceptable to the doctors. He said that all doctors were united against the legislation and rejected it. The move will be resisted at every level,` he added.

He demanded that the draft of District Health Authority Bill should be made public. He said that government should make proper consultation with the doctors before presenting the bill in the provincial assembly.

Dr Siraj said that government should immediately take the doctors into confidence otherwise they would not let political workers to intervene in the affairs of the healthcare centres.

He warned that the doctors would soon meet in a general body meeting in Hayatabad to devise a plan initially for a pen-down strike that would be followed by boycott of duty.

`In case of any complications, the entire responsibility would rest with the provincial government and health department officials,` he said. Bureau Report