Quacks arrested from hospital in Bahawalpur

Doctor, dispenser had been working at the hospital for five years

BAHAWALPUR: The Rahim Yar Khan Health EDO raided a hospital at Zahir Pir Chowk on Thursday and arrested two men who had been working as a doctor and a pharmacy dispenser there without medical credentials. A department spokesperson said they had been running Al Riaz Hospital at Zahir Pir Chowk for five years.

EDO Makhdoom Basharat had raided the hospital after a citizen complained that Mehar Noor, the ‘doctor’ at the hospital did not have an MBBS degree, and the dispenser, Muhammad Asif, too, was unqualified for the job. The Health Department team raided the hospital and arrested Asif and Noor. They seized a large quantity of illegally imported medicines and sealed the hospital.

The spokesperson said that the police had examined their medical credentials and found those to have been forged. They had put Asif and Noor in a lock up and started legal proceedings against them, he said. Basharat told journalists that the raid was conducted as part of the Health Department’s crackdown on quacks in the area. “Hopefully, we will catch other quacks in the area as well and put them behind bars…no one can be allowed to endanger lives.”

Published in The Express Tribune, July 1^st, 2016.