Menace of quackery

Adoctor’s mistake is buried in the soil; a lawyer’s mistake is imprisoned; but society’s mistake lives on giving birth to fake medical doctors and a whole lot of dangerous people with little knowledge. According to a survey conducted by the Punjab health department five years ago, around 70,000 quack clinics and unlicensed treatment centres were functioning in the province and at one time three years back this figure reached 100,000. Officials of the health department have admitted that the Punjab Health Commission has failed to end the menace of quackery, and ironically in the past two years, 10,000 new quack clinics have emerged.

The PHC moved against quackery around three years ago but the action failed to give the desired results. The problem with quackery is that disabled quacks are soon replaced by new ones. Fake medical doctors have spread their tentacles in cities, small towns and villages offering cure for all diseases under the sun in exchange for little money. This enormous number of quacks claims to cure cancer, diabetes, AIDS, hepatitis and suchlike diseases. Unfortunately, not only are they fleecing the poor, and the not so poor, and ignorant people of their hard earned money, but they are contributing to the spread of these illnesses. The sordid business of playing with human life is going on reportedly due to negligence on the part of relevant government officials.

Fake physicians have become so bold that now they are treating even coronavirus patients. They are conducting surgeries without proper care and thus causing only harm and no good. They have set up maternity homes where many women and babies have died at the hands of these fake doctors. However, fake practitioners of medicine and surgery are not to be entirely blamed for the present sad state of affairs. Quacks are not born, it is society that thrusts the title of physicians on unqualified people. Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to everything.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 25^th, 2020.

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