PESHAWAR, June 6: The Specialist Doctors Society (SDS) on Thursday demanded the formation of a judicial commission to probe into the way in which the healthcare system in the Frontier province has allegedly been sabotaged  under the guise of institution-based practice at the public sector hospitals.

“Despite the report by the federal government describing the IBP as disastrous, the system was launched in the NWFP. Therefore, we ask  the government to unveil the names of the health officials concerned who furnished wrong information to the government, and award them strict punishment,” said SDS Chairman Dr Perwez Khan at a news conference at Peshawar Press Club.

Flanked by Dr Said Alam Mahsud, Dr Khadimullah Kakakhel, Dr Khushnood Ali Baz and others, he urged the government to accept the resignations of the doctors immediately.

The SDS is the organization of the specialist doctors who resigned after refusing to join the IBP.

Dr Khan said the society would soon constitute an ethics committee, comprising journalists, lawyers, judges, teachers and social  workers, to take to task the consultants involved in unethical medical practices in the private sector. He said measures would be announced shortly to provide competitive services to the patients at private clinics.

He alleged that the government had destroyed the 55-year-old health delivery system by introducing the IBP.

According to him, 98 specialist doctors had resigned while the some others were contemplating moving abroad.

SDS General Secretary Dr Mian Naushad Ali alleged that a lot of anomalies were taking place in the IBP. Some 65 consultants were doing private practice with the IBP, he said and added that the doctors who resigned had sacrificed their jobs but not joined the IBP.

The government, he said, was aggressively campaigning against the doctors who didn’t opt for the IBP.

“We also plan to establish medical institutions to provide specialist training to the junior doctors, because  our resignations have dealt a severe blow to the medical education in the province,” said Dr Said Alam Mahsud, another office-bearer  of the SDS.

Dr Mahsud also blamed the government for harassment of the doctors. The doctors, he said, weren’t awarded pensions despite decades of service at government hospitals.