The doctors’ decision to continue their strike with a resolution not to even treat emergency cases was a last resort after government’s carefree attitude pushed them to the wall, Dr Arthur Kobina Kennedy has suggested. Expressing his sympathy to families who might have lost loved ones as a result of the strike, Dr Kennedy, who is a lecturer at the University of Cape Coast said doctors are very much concerned about the lives of the citizens, explaining why doctors were still taking emergency cases in the initial stage of the strike. “It looks very obvious that the doctors got to where they have gotten to very reluctantly. They gave repeated warnings, even when the strike started they were rendering emergency services,” he told Dzifa Bampoh on Joy FM's Top Story Monday. He chastised the government for taking interest in blaming the previous administration instead of concentrating on solving the problem at stake. Dr. Arthur Kennedy, a former presidential aspirant of the opposition New Patriotic Party, equally blamed President Mills for not exhibiting the required leadership style to arrest the situation. President Mills in Dodowa last week made a fruitless appeal to the doctors to rescind their decision and resume work. But Dr Kennedy said the appeal was lame, stating that the president should have rather made a direct phone call to the leadership of the Ghana Medical Association, instead of going on tour, which he said was ostensibly to canvass for votes for the 2012 elections. He discounted the public perception that the doctor’s unyielding posture was too militant. Many have called the striking doctors names and have portrayed them as an unpatriotic lot, but he thinks doctors rather deserve commendation. “Why is it that when it comes to politicians’ remuneration they never talk about patriotism, but whenever other groups are involved then they remember they must preach patriotism?” Government said, it will consider committing doctors who are sponsored by the state to the postgraduate level, to sign an undertaken never to embark on an industrial action, but Dr Kenndy said that would not prevent doctors from going on strike, noting “it is impossible…regardless of whether people sign bonds or not, when it is necessary they will go on like. The strike action has brought serious burden on the two security health facilities in Accra – 37 Military Hospital and Police Hospital. The Minister of Interior, Brig. Gen. Henry Smith toured these facilities on Monday and distributed drugs to them, but the action has been described as a “window dressing” by Dr Kennedy, who questioned how patients outside the capital can access these facilities. On the way forward, he suggested: “We must strengthen our National Health system so that over the long term, a lot of doctors would no longer work for government, but work for private organisations whose financial strength would be underpinned by a strong and robust national health insurance system. That is the thing that would stem the repeated cycle of doctors going on strike.” In calling on government and the Ghana Medical Association to lower the rhetoric and find a middle ground to solve the raging issue, Dr Arthur Kennedy was however hopeful the strike will end in a matter of days.