Healthcare workers’ demo disrupts vaccination, medical services

Health services and vaccination programmes are facing disruption as several sections of medical professionals continue their demonstrations to press home their separate demands.

Government nurses, medical technologists, pharmacists, and health assistants have been holding separate programmes and demonstrations for the last two weeks and have threatened to intensify them, indicating further disruption in healthcare services.

Vaccination of children across the country came to a near halt as several thousand health assistants began a sit-in at the Central Shaheed Minar on Saturday to realise their demands.

The demonstrators said they have long been making their demands and were forced to take to the streets as the authorities did not pay heed to them.

ABM Abu Hanif, director (administration) of Director General of Health Services (DGHS), however, said they were in favour of most of the demands, and the implementation of many of them is already underway.

But the agitating health workers are not willing to allow the time needed; instead, they have been demonstrating in violation of their service rules and causing suffering to the service seekers.

"The health ministry is working to resolve the issues," he told The Daily Star yesterday.

Health assistants are frontline public health workers, especially in rural and hard-to-reach areas. They conduct routine vaccination sessions and register newborn children, among other responsibilities.

All the activities have been suspended since the health assistants began the strike on Saturday, Hasanul Mahmud, assistant director of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation under the DGHS, told this correspondent.

Replying to a question, he said they would arrange extra sessions, once the health assistants withdraw their demonstration, to make up for the losses caused by the protest.

Several thousand health assistants took position in front of the DGHS office around 9:00am yesterday as they saw no progress on their demands.

Several mid-level officials from DGHS asked them to hold talks, but they refused and said they would only sit with the health adviser, said Fazlul Haque Chowdhury, member secretary of the Bangladesh Health Assistant Association Central Coordination Council.

The association has long been demanding amendments to the recruitment rules, upgrading their entry post to grade-14 instead of grade-16, removal of salary discrimination, and the granting of technical status, among their six-point demand.

On November 23, the organisation announced that it would go for work abstention if its demands were not met by November 28.

As per the previous announcement, two other key professional groups in public health services -- medical technologists and pharmacists -- are supposed to enforce a four-hour (8:00am to 12:00pm) work abstention today.

On November 25, they, under the banner of the Medical Technologist and Pharmacist 10th Grade Implementation Council, announced a series of programmes to raise their entry post to grade-10 instead of grade-11.

They observed a two-hour work abstention on Sunday, leaving many patients without services. Medical technologists conduct laboratory tests that help doctors diagnose and treat patients, while pharmacists supply prescribed medicines at hospitals.

Ripon Shikdar, coordinator of the council, said around 13,000 medical technologists work at government medical facilities.

The health ministry has, on several occasions, assured them that their demand would be met, but it has yet to be implemented, he said.

"We will go for a full-day complete shutdown at all government and private hospitals, clinics, diagnostic centres, and health education institutions on Thursday unless our demand is met."

Ripon added that they held separate meetings with secretaries of health and public administration ministries yesterday, and both assured them that their demand would be met. "But we are not convinced and will therefore move forward with tomorrow's [today's] programme," he told this newspaper last night.

At a rally on November 23, Bangladesh Nurses Association and Bangladesh Midwifery Society announced programmes to press home their eight-point demand, including scrapping the reported plan to abolish the Directorate General of Nursing and Midwifery.

They staged two-hour demonstrations on November 26, 27, and 30 at medical facilities across the country, hampering healthcare services.

They were supposed to go for a "complete shutdown" at all medical facilities yesterday, but it was postponed after the health ministry called a meeting over their demand, said Asaduzzaman Jewel, secretary general of the Bangladesh Nurses Association.

Talking to The Daily Star last night, Shariful Islam, president of the association, said they had a fruitful meeting with the health secretary. "We will set our next course of action after holding a meeting tonight [last night]."

The Daily Star could not reach Health Secretary Saidur Rahman for comments, as he did not respond to our phone calls.