24 May 2004	Monday	04 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

PESHAWAR, May 23: Doctors have asked the government to issue a notification regarding abolition of private practice, saying it would remove unrest among doctors.

Representatives of the Khyber Medical College Teachers' Association said that the provincial government had abolished the system, also known as institution-based practice, a long time ago but a notification in this regard had not yet been issued.

"Doctors fear that the government could introduce it (institution-based practice) again", said an office-bearer of the association. The practice was introduced by the military government in March 2002 in the Frontier province by virtue of which doctors had to abandon their private clinics and start practice in the evening shift at the state-run hospitals.

The military government had argued that the introduction of the institution-based practice was aimed at eliminating illegal and unethical practices. Doctors were required to surrender Rs120 to the government out of their Rs300 consultation fee and they had been given two options: either to practice in hospitals or tender resignations.

Some 35 senior doctors had resigned in protest, while others had toed the government's line. Following the general elections in 2002, the NWFP government had constituted an 11-member parliamentary committee under MPA Anwar Kamal Khan Marwat. The committee had suggested to the government to abolish the system.

It had also called for the establishment of a health regulatory authority with powers to initiate action against the doctors indulging in unethical practices. Its recommendation also included registration of private clinics and laboratories and allowing only the qualified pathologists and radiologists to run clinical and pathological laboratories.

However, the parliamentary committee's recommendations are yet to be implemented despite the passage of more than one year. Doctors' representatives said that they had already started OPDs in the evenings on voluntary basis.

"There is no legal status of the evening OPD, but we are keeping our promise to start OPDs in the evenings if the institution-based practice was abolished," they said. Doctors accused the government of delaying the notification to abolish the practice, adding it was creating unrest among the doctors.

An official in the health secretariat said that the NWFP government was trying to bring a bill in the provincial assembly aimed at scrapping the institution-based practice, adding that the bill would finally be sent to the NWFP Governor Iftikhar Hussain Shah for assent.

The governor, the official said, would not give approval to the bill because he was the moving spirit behind the introduction of the new system. The governor's interest can be gauged from the fact that it was still in vogue in the Federally- Administrated Areas, which comes under his jurisdiction.