May 11, 2007	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 23, 1428

ISLAMABAD, May 10: The Health Ministry on Thursday blamed lack of a necessary law for spurious medicines being advertised on the electronic media by some non-qualified hakims.

But Minister of State for Health Shahnaz Sheikh told the National Assembly during the question hour that a bill to regulate the homeopathic, Unani and ayurvedic medicines was already before parliament as one of the steps taken to curb such illegal advertisements, including cooperation sought from other ministries and prosecution of offenders under the existing Drugs Act.

The minister also complained about unspecified “irresponsible television channels” for accepting such ads and faced an uproar from MMA benches after she alleged lack of support from religious scholars in some cases in the North West Frontier Province the to federal government’s campaign to make Pakistan polio-free this year.

PML member Zeb Gohar Ayub protested against the reported use of a private FM radio station by one Maulvi Fazlullah of the NWFP’s Swat district, himself a polio victim, urging people not to let their children take polio drops on the plea that only God could inflict and cure diseases.

Ms Sheikh said the ministry had also received such reports and lack of cooperation from some ulema.

The MMA members saw the allegation as a move to discredit the religious alliance’s provincial government in the NWFP and one of them said alliance leaders Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmed had themselves been inaugurating anti-polio campaigns.

Ms Sheikh later acknowledged that the federal government did receive cooperation from the NWFP government though, she said, there had been problems at “some places” such as the use of the FM radio in Swat.

Among the measures taken to check illegal drug ads, she said her ministry had at times requested the information ministry, the Cabinet Division and the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) to intervene with media managements and cable and satellite channels to ensure that they respected the law of the land to protect the public from misleading advertisements.