Political mobilisation of medical professionals in Pakistan
Health and citizenship in the political mobilisation of junior doctors and medical professionals in Pakistan
Doctor activism in Pakistan was triggered by legal amendments over public sector hospital autonomy. Doctors have seen these reforms as a form of stealth privatisation which is likely to make public hospitals less accessible to the poor. Unlike in the extant research on medical mobilisation, Pakistan has seen doctor activists shutting down hospitals, boycotting outpatient departments, organising sit-ins outside government buildings, and coming out on the streets. Such activism shows doctors transcending their clinical roles, when they are expected to draw upon their clinical objectivity to construct themselves as moral observers diagnosing the ailing body of the nation (Bayoumi and Hamdy 2023). For doctor-activists, Qureshi suggests, the clinical and civic roles may intertwine in ways that complicate the conceptualisation of (biomedical) citizenship. This presentation is based on preliminary findings from Qureshi’s ongoing ethnographic work in Pakistan.
Speaker
Dr Ayaz Qureshi, Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
Dr Qureshi is the author of ‘AIDS in Pakistan: Bureaucracy, Public Goods and NGOs’, which is the first full-length study of HIV/AIDS work in relation to government and NGOs. He has written extensively of on health and development in Pakistan. A full list can be found at his university profile page. He is currently leading a Wellcome Trust funded project on the role of medical professionals in health policy in Pakistan.
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