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Quacks spreading AIDS and hepatitis: experts

By Hasan Mansoor

KARACHI: Experts and officials of the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) blame quacks for being equally responsible for spreading cancer, AIDS and hepatitis in urban and rural population of Sindh.

“Quacks use one syringe many times and they number in hundreds of thousands in Pakistan,” Dr Aziz Khan Tank, chief of the anti-quackery committee of the PMA, told the Daily Times.

“These quacks do all sorts of treatments and they even tinker with surgeries and treatment of cancer and hepatitis B, C, etc, which is dangerous and cause negative effects on the overall health of society,” said Dr Tank, who is also secretary-general of the College of Family Medicine Pakistan.

The PMA said more than 600,000 quacks were operating across the country and around one-third of them were in Sindh. “And most of these quacks, in Sindh, are in Karachi. Their number should be between 70,000 to 80,000,” Dr Shershah Syed, secretary-general of the PMA, told the Daily Times.

He said Pakistan was a signatory to the Almati Declaration which clearly said that the government would provide basic and emergency health facilities to its citizens free of cost.

“But people have to pay heavy sums to both government-run and private hospitals and which is the main reason for these people’s opting for quacks who charge less fees and have their own methods or claims of treatment for all illnesses found on earth,” said Dr Syed.

He said there were a number of private hospitals operating as charitable organizations, but they were few and the fact was that it was still the government, which was primarily responsible for ensuring free health facilities to the citizens. Dr Syed said the PMA even considered Hakims and homoeopaths quacks when they tinker with allopathic methods, instead of their own.

“We have no objection if these Hakims and homoeopaths treat people with their own methods, but generally we see Hakims give steroids and homoeopaths treat their patients with antibiotics, which put them in the line of rest of quacks,” said Dr Syed. He was unhappy with the telecast and publishing of expensive advertisements of quacks in the local print and electronic media and said such publicity helped quacks mislead naïve people with great ease.

“We have been appealing to the president and the prime minister to take notice of this menace, but to no avail,” said the PMA official.

Adviser to the chief minister on health Malik Faisal recently said in a statement that there was a need for creating awareness among the masses about the losses being faced by them on account of quacks and spurious medicines.

“A massive drive against quacks and spurious medicines is need of the hour to bring about a healthy atmosphere in society,” he had said. But Mr Faisal had been saying this for quite some time. Last year he had said the health department would launch an operation after Eidul Fitr against quacks and all those involved in selling substandard medicines in Sindh. But that drive could not be launched.

“We conducted a survey around five years ago which revealed that there were 60,000 quacks in the city and today there are as many as 600,000 quacks across the country,” he said.

He said before partition, the British Raj brought out “Bohr report” in 1946, which dealt with quackery, but after the creation of Pakistan it mushroomed in every nook and corner of the fast growing city. He said in the 1950s these quacks claimed that they could deal with “sex problems,” but as internal migration increased due to uprooting of rural people, and cities became populous, quacks started claiming they could cure cancer and other dangerous diseases and today they are “minting billions of rupees from the common man.”

“Previously these quacks would give useless powder to their victims and today they give capsules containing neem powder.” He said in the 1960s dispensers also started practicing medicine due to the shortage of qualified doctors and the absence of legislation against quackery. Then a large number of homeopaths emerged on the scene without proper qualifications.

He said in 1973 the then government tried to make a law against quackery and prepared a draft ordinance called the Sindh Magic Remedies Act of 1973, but unfortunately it never became a law. He said after the late dictator General Zia-ul-Haq staged a coup against the government of prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977, quackery was promoted at the state level.

“The government of Zia-ul-Haq condoned quackery through permitting a dispenser to practice medicine if he or she had worked with a doctor for 10 years,” he said. He said there was a registration body for doctors called the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) and if there was a lapse by a doctor, his/her registration was cancelled. On the contrary, there was no registration body for quacks.

He said the PMDC made a law on quackery in 1962 and yet another law in 1982, which could send a quack to prison, but merely for two months if he harmed somebody. He said it was not the real deterrent and the government should come up with stringent measures against quackery.

Dr Syed said treatment results of the quacks were sometimes very devastating for the health of patients and sometimes they could make the disease incurable.

“They (quacks) claim even to treat hernia, which has no cure other than surgical operation,” he said. Dr Syed said quacks claimed that their medicines had no side effects. Patients often used these medicines for longer durations, which could cause further complications. “When patients reach us they become incurable,” he added.

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