Police in the Pakistani city of Quetta arrested at least 50 doctors who were protesting against the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) kits for health workers on the front lines of the country’s battle against the coronavirus, officials and doctors’ union representatives said.
Representatives of the Young Doctors Association (YDA), who organised the protest, said at least 67 members had been arrested on Monday. Release orders had been issued for those detained, said Dr Rahim Khan Babar, a YDA spokesman, but they were refusing to leave the police stations where they were being held until their demands for additional PPE kits were met.
“I was arrested yesterday, I am still in the police station,” Babar told Al Jazeera on Tuesday. “They have given orders for our release, but we have refused to leave, because no steps have been taken. Doctors came out for equipment, and you beat them and then locked them up. What kind of law is that?”
He added, “In the trauma centre, before the coronavirus, we had enough kits that if we were operating in the operation theatre, we had a surgical mask and cap,” said Babar, who works at a public sector hospital. “Now we don’t even have that.”
The number of coronavirus cases in Pakistan now have 584 additional cases bringing the country’s number of active cases to 3,378, with 54 deaths and at least 429 patients having recovered since the outbreak began in late February, according to government data.