Doctors on duty at Bahrain's main public hospital claim they are being treated "worse than labourers" due to allegedly "filthy" conditions and bed shortages in the on-call rooms.

They allege a ceiling even collapsed in a temporary accommodation at Salmaniya Medical Complex (SMC) where doctors are supposed to rest between seeing patients while on duty for several hours, reported the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.

The Bahrain Medical Society (BMS) is backing doctors who have made the allegations and said the issue had been raised several times with the Health Ministry, but nothing had been done.

"The BMS totally supports these basic fundamental rights of the doctors," BMS president Dr Mohammed Al Rafea told the GDN.

"The issue was discussed several times with the Ministry of Health at various levels. Promises were made to solve this matter and provide better accommodation and work environment, which will have a great impact on productivity and job satisfaction among physicians.

"However, no progress has been made on the ground. Thereby we repeat our request for the Ministry of Health to take this matter seriously and to solve it as soon as possible."

Dr Al Rafea made his comments after SMC doctors contacted the GDN to demand a risk allowance due to conditions in the on-call rooms at the hospital.

They also urged Health Ministry Hospital Affairs assistant under-secretary Dr Waleed Al Manea to visit the facilities to see conditions for himself, saying that two to five doctors were forced to share a single room over a duty period of more than 30 hours.

"We would like to invite him to visit the doctor's hostel, doctor's rooms in the wards and Al Fateh building. Each room is occupied by two to five doctors, who leave their homes at 7am and return at 2.15pm the following day every three to five days," said the doctors in a letter signed "SMC Scrubs".

"The number of residents on call per night far exceeds the number of rooms and beds.

"At times there isn't room to accommodate a doctor so he or she is ordered to sleep in the male or female TV room on a sofa. This is unacceptable and unjustified. We did not go to medical school to be treated worse than labourers, who have the Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) backing them."

They suggested doctors who were on-call and who lived within five kilometres of the hospital should be allowed to go home to rest when their services were not required.

"Doctors should be given the choice of doing calls within a 5km radius until the ministry is well able to provide them with reasonable accommodation," they said. "Otherwise, change the on-call system to a shift system that does not require accommodation."

They said each on-call doctor should be provided their own room that they can lock while they catch up on sleep in between seeing patients.

"It is also not of our religious Islamic values to have females and males clumped together in alternating rooms," they said. "Male and female cleaners barge into rooms while females doctors are sleeping."

In addition, they complained about hygiene in the on-call rooms where they claimed they had encountered a mouse, insects and bed bugs.

"The rooms are filthy and do not meet the basic hygienic standards of any accommodation let alone a hospital hostel," they said.

The doctors also described the bathroom facilities provided as "disgusting".

"The showers are leaking, or not operating well, and toilets are disgusting and flooding," they said.

Other demands included a 24-hour coffee chain, vending machines and water coolers inside the hospital, as well as a revised menu at the hospital cafeteria - which they said should function round-the-clock only for staff, unlike now.

"The food supplied to doctors on-call is out of sync with what a healthy meal should be or what is desired," they said. The Health Ministry did not respond when contacted by the GDN. – TradeArabia News Service