Kazmi demanded Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to start a drive to eradicate quackery.
He said the Punjab government had made the Healthcare Commission Act in 2010 under which all the Health Departments District Coordination Officers (DCO’s) and Executive District Officers (EDO’s) were to end quackery in their respective districts but the commission had not functioned properly to curtail the threat from the province.
Furthermore, Kazmi said that the Pakistan Supreme Court’s (SC) ruling in 2009 ordered all health secretaries to take action against quackery but nothing was practically achieved.
The PMA would soon file a contempt of court petition for not acting on the order of the SC, Kazmi added.
Upon enquiry the Healthcare Commission’s Chief Executive Dr Ajmal said the commission had no power to punish or seal the quacks’ clinics as there was no Anti-Quackery Act in the country. However, clinics and hospitals could be registered, he added.
The immediate registration of approximately 65,000 clinics and hospitals throughout Punjab and is not an easy task and it requires the collective efforts of institutions, authorities and agencies, he added.
Ajmal said Punjab had 53,000 qualified doctors and around 200,000 quacks. The mushroom growth of quacks did not take place overnight but it happened due to sheer ignorance for the last 65 years, Ajmal added.
However, he said that from May 2013 the commission had started registering the bigger hospitals, clinics and consequently registered around 200 hospitals.