FAISALABAD: One can find a plenty of illegal doctors working in rural and urban areas of the district. The huge billboards advertise dental and medical treatments. Doctors say quacks attract a good number of patients because of the lack of knowledge, not poverty. They say one could approach qualified doctors at the outpatient departments of public hospitals at a nominal fee.

The Punjab Healthcare Commission (PHC) estimates that about 270,000 quacks are practicing in the province.

Doctors say direct and indirect effects of quacks’ treatment result in obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, hepatitis, AIDS, gangrene, deformity, disability, organ damage, hemorrhage, tetanus, nerve damage, paralysis, drug resistant strains of infections, tuberculosis, infertility and septicemia.

One such quack has his clinic at a Clock Tower bazaar. He said he paid monthly amounts to Health Department officials to keep his clinic running.

The quack defended his way of working, saying medical treatment had been a centuries-old occupation, much before the launch of formal medical education.

Ruling party MPA Khalid Saeed said strict action must be taken against the quacks as they were inflicting irreparable loss to people’s health. He said it was the responsibility of the health department working under the district government to move against quacks.Khadim Husain, of Samundri, a rural town of Faisalabad, said the area was also infested with quacks.

He said people preferred the local quacks because health facilities were in the Faisalabad city.

Pakistan Medical Association, Faisalabad chapter, secretary Dr Mohammad Irfan said a strict move had been launched against the quacks when Saeed Ahmed Wahla was the district coordination officer (DCO), who had formed raiding teams. He said during the crackdown scores of quacks had been detected and their clinics sealed.

Now, he said, quacks were running their clinics few meters from the office of the DCO and the health executive district officer.

He also questioned the working of the PHC, saying it had done nothing against the illegal doctors. He demanded the district government launch an operation against the quacks.

He said they received patients every day who had been ill-treated by quacks. DCO Salman Ghani refused to comment.

Published in Dawn November 16th, 2016