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| YDA Protesting … Again…. |
For a while now I have beenplanning to write something about Health Care in Pakistan. But now, given theawesome strike by the Young Doctor’s Association in Lahore, this seems to be anideal time to present my views on this and other related issues. To start with,there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind about what the Young Doctor’sAssociation is. It is basically a mafia that has terrorized and abused hospitalsand the whole healthcare system especially in Punjab. 2 years ago, they came onto the streets and started holding demonstrations against their apparently ‘low’salaries. Backed by our moronic media that salivates at any protest let aloneone by Doctors that too in Punjab, encouraged and promoted this cause of the doctorsand ensured they got what they wanted by helping them out with public opinion. Thegovernment in Punjab eventually gave in and increased the salaries of YoungDoctors working in Government Hospitals across the province. Now ideally the YoungDoctors Association (YDA) would have stopped there and just continued workingfor wellbeing of its members. Instead they basically did what the lawyers didpost 2008; they became thugs and started abusing their power. So while peopleare dying, the YDA is on strike because they are protesting the sacking of theirseniors as a result of the Punjab Institute of Cardiology debacle, which incidentallythe media had been lobbying for.
So just for your understanding,the same group of people who the media helped create and blossom in to a fullfledge mafia, who now skip out on their duties and what not, is now refusing towork creating severe issues for everyone. Starting off, thank you Pakistanmedia for your ever crap reporting and short sightedness on major nationalissues where you sell off the people of Pakistan for some crap ratings. ThankYou guys for screwing us over again.
Moving on, the YDA problem is notgoing anywhere. It shall stay the way it is, because these guys have been giventhe false sense of achievement by our media as part of their 2 year old hissyfit that ensured raises in their salaries. But what can be done is thefollowing and hopefully by doing so we can ensure better healthcare in Pakistanfor all and a weakening of YDA as a mafia over time.
We basically need to fix ourmedical education system. The colleges are fine and the education level ispretty decent so no need to play with that. What needs fixing is the entry andexit of graduates from Medical Institutions. Now for those of you who do notknow this, people who attend government funded Medical Colleges pay peanuts asyearly fees. For example, the total fee for one year at the Rawalpindi MedicalCollege is less than PKR 20,000. This is possible because the medical educationis heavily subsidized by the provincial governments by using our tax money. Soin essence, the people of Pakistan pay for the super low tuition fees thatmedical graduates pay for government medical schools. Now thing is once theygraduate, the medical students often either stop practicing (Very common incase of female graduates) or they simply give tests and move abroad. That meansthat the people of Pakistan funded cheap education for people expecting thatthey would serve Pakistan and instead they either choose not to practice the skillwe have paid them to learn or worse they just leave the country to go make moremoney somewhere else courtesy they education we paid for. Do you see where I amgoing with this? This is effectively stealing.
What I am saying is not toincrease medical school fees, but instead what I am saying is, if someone wantsto go to med school on our tax money, they need to sign a 5 year bond to servein Pakistan no matter what once they graduate. And if they do not want to servein Pakistan, they should be able to buy out their bond by paying the amount thetax payers have spent on them which is about 6 Million Rupees per doctor over 5years. This is not being mean, this is just asking for justice as a tax payer.Also just to clarify this is not valid for graduates of private med schools,who study on their own money and have nothing to do with the tax payer fundededucation system.
So given that these med schoolgraduates have undergone heavily subsidized education, it is only fair to paythem a decent wage rate that most BBAs or BSc students get. And this was thecase till two years ago when the Young Doctors Association was formed and wellyou know the rest of the story. Theyprotested, our media made it worse, Government was forced to fold and now theyare getting paid much higher salaries courtesy the same tax payer who also paidfor their education. By now you can clearly see how wrong this whole thing is. Weneed to revamp our Medical Education system. The 5 year Bond is something thatneeds to be introduced to safeguard the investment made by the tax payer in thecreation of new doctors. It needs to be clarified that doctors are created ingovernment run facilities to serve the people of Pakistan and they are supposedto do that at any rate because we paid for their really expensive education.Also for a lot of people who say then they shall not become doctors if stufflike this happens, your choice. People tend to become doctors out of free will,no one is forcing anyone (apart from their parents mostly) to become doctors.So why expect special treatment for doing something willfully while already receivinghuge subsidies in form of cheap tuition fees. This false sense of achievementthat has been developed in young doctors needs to end and the 5 year bond is asmall step in the right direction.
If our population understood thisand took it up as a genuine logical argument, then we can possibly see an improvementin our Health Care System, where people become doctors because they wish toserve the people who paid for their education and made them who they areinstead of bullying the same people in to submission backed by a moronic mediathat would even sell death for 2 good days of ratings.
What I am saying is not toincrease medical school fees, but instead what I am saying is, if someone wantsto go to med school on our tax money, they need to sign a 5 year bond to servein Pakistan no matter what once they graduate. And if they do not want to servein Pakistan, they should be able to buy out their bond by paying the amount thetax payers have spent on them which is about 6 Million Rupees per doctor over 5years. This is not being mean, this is just asking for justice as a tax payer.Also just to clarify this is not valid for graduates of private med schools,who study on their own money and have nothing to do with the tax payer fundededucation system. 