WHEN quacks believe they have a ‘right’ to their quackery, it is an indication of how far the rot has spread. A two-judge bench of the Peshawar High Court was seized of two petitions filed by a number of medical practitioners against the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Care Commission’s action of sealing the clinics they were running in Malakand and Swat districts. The petitioners also requested the court to order the provincial health authority to process their applications for registration/licence/permit pending before it. These individuals included 23 paramedics with two-year professional diplomas in dental technology, 12 paramedics with one-year diplomas in dental surgery, and others with one-year diplomas and certificates in various fields of dentistry. Fortunately, the court has not found their credentials sufficient to grant them relief. In a detailed judgement delivered recently, it has held that the petitioners did not possess “the prescribed qualification for running private dental or medical clinics under the existing law”. The judges held that a “dental practitioner must possess a bachelor’s degree in dental surgery” to be legally entitled to practise.

When a state assigns such shockingly low priority to healthcare as to spend only 0.9pc of its GDP on the sector despite the needs of a growing population, there are bound to be unscrupulous individuals who will take advantage of that gap. The medical profession, because it directly impacts life and limb, requires those aspiring to it to invest considerable time, effort and resources before they can assume such an onerous responsibility. The KP health authorities are to be commended for taking action against clinics that provide substandard care. It is not only a question of protecting individuals from harm — when people suffer at the hands of unqualified medical professionals, it can increase the government’s health burden, at least in the case of those who cannot afford expensive private care. That is because — provided the patient has survived his initial ‘treatment’ — more costly medical procedures are needed to repair the damage caused by quasi-doctors. Moreover, this is only the tip of the iceberg. It is estimated that there are tens of thousands of quacks all over the country who endanger the lives of people every day. All said and done though, the crux of the issue is a population whose basic human needs are not being met, and a callous state unmindful of its duty.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2017