Bill proposing tough punishment for quacks cleared

Lawmakers urge PMDC to ban unregistered courses

ISLAMABAD: A Senate panel on Thursday cleared a bill, which proposes stricter punishment for fake doctors, for further debate and approval from the upper house of parliament.

The Medical and Dental Council (Amendment) Bill 2017, which had been moved by Senator Azam Khan Swati, proposes imprisoning doctors for two to 10 years while imposing fines of Rs2 million for practising without having who are not registered with the medical regulatory authority.

Though severe, these punishments were a far cry from what Senator Swati had verbally demanded during the panel - hang or jail for life those doctors or quacks found playing with the lives of patients.

Meanwhile, the committee also directed the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) to take action through the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) against those medical institutions which were offering unregistered medical courses.  FIRs should be registered against them and their campuses must be sealed, the panel said.



Illegal organ trade

Drawing the committee’s attention towards the illegal trade of organs in the country, Senator Swati estimated the illicit trade to be worth $2 billion. He added that traffickers and doctors involved in the business ‘purchase’ kidneys from the poor donors for just Rs50,000 before selling them onto patients for Rs5 million.

Senator Khalida Parveen alleged that some doctors of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) were also involved in the illegal trade of kidneys. She claimed that doctors demand Rs1.3 million to conduct such transplants.

While offering some defence of doctors, PMDC President Professor Dr Shabbir Ahmed Lehri said that in the world 40 per cent of people donate their organs. By contrast in Pakistan, there was no culture of donating organs.

He further suggested that doctors involved in illegal transplants had fled.

NIH labs

Senators Kalsoom Parveen and Khalida criticised the testing facilities at the National Institute of Health in the capital. They said that laboratories and equipment at the institute had not been updated which meant that results from the institute were erratic and differed from the results of private laboratories in the capital.

On her suggestion, the panel formed a committee to check the standards employed at NIH’s labs.  The committee was directed to file its review report within a week.

Moreover, Kalsoom claimed that doctors at Pims prescribing various tests often refer their patients to their private labs in the market.

Talking about the free treatment of patients, the senator said that private hospitals had turned into business centres who were ignoring the directive of treating half of their patients for free.

Meanwhile, Senator Ashok Kumar said a number of hospitals had been earning millions for entry tests but spent little on poor patients. He pointed out PMDC policy stipulates that every teaching hospital is bound to treat 50 per cent of its patients for free, but during a visit to the Shifa International Hospital showed they could not find a single patient being treated for free.

Critiquing government-run hospitals, he said that federal hospitals had no system to sterilise equipment. The situation was so bad that even the sterilisation systems had rust and were thus a source of Hepatitis and HIV/Aids.

Moreover, Senator Kumar said that a sub-committee had visited various teaching hospitals and found that dental equipment was being reused without proper sterilisation – posing a risk of spreading hepatitis C.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 5^th, 2017.