PESHAWAR, Dec 3: Hakims, homeopaths and unqualified doctors have been causing serious health problems to the people in the garb of sex medication, patients and a doctor told Dawn.

“I have examined seven patients during the last few months, who had developed acute renal and liver-problems, because of the wrong medication by hakims, homeopaths and unqualified doctors for sex-related problems,” said sexologist Dr Muzaffar Tareen at the Khyber Teaching Hospital.

According to him, patients also suffered from infertility and said that there was a need to take complete history of the patients, followed by relevant investigations and treatment. He lamented that unqualified doctors ignored these aspects and prescribed three to four opium-based drugs to the patients, putting them at a razor’s edge.

He said that sex-related problems were often caused by other diseases, such as diabetics, hypertension, anxiety, depression and heart problems. There were also other causes which should be taken into account while treating patients with sex-related problems.

Every patient visiting the clinics of hakims and homeopaths are treated with testosterone and steroids that do more harm than good.

Recently, the provincial health department notified the name of a so-called hakim as fraud. The department has also advised the people against visiting the clinic, but it has failed to initiate action against him. Nevertheless, it has analyzed the contents of the drugs collected from his clinic and had found them opium-filled and containing steroids.

Dr Tareen, who is the lone sexologist in Pakistan, attributed the rise in the sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV/AIDS to the non-availability of the qualified people and lack of health education among the people which compelled them to visit the so-called doctors.

Some of these doctors claimed to be professors at universities that existed nowhere in the world, still the gullible people visited their clinics, because they had no other option, said Dr Tareen.

The field of sexology was 27-year-old in the US, but in Pakistan, the patients suffered because of lack of official patronage regarding this speciality due to which the clinics of fake doctors thrived, he said.

At quacks’ clinics, the patients are given loosely-packed drugs, which don’t indicate information concerning contents, date of manufacturing, expiry and prices.

Dr Tareen said that psychological and nervous problems were also the main cause of sex problems, but hakims and homeopaths were not trained in the emerging field of sexology and were only concerned with minting money.

“I paid Rs12,000 as consultation fee to a doctor in Lahore, but the problem persisted despite taking the prescribed drugs regularly,” said a young man. He said he had been visiting a number of hakims and doctors for the last five years, but without any benefit.

According to Dr Tareen, these hakims and homeopaths only focused on the treatment of males and ignored the females who faced similar problems.

“In US and Canada, there is a concept of couple treatment, where the sexologists take detailed history of both the husband and wife,” he said, adding that here the womenfolk was depressed due to social and cultural taboos in a male-dominated society that further added to the problem.

He said the raw material used in sex drugs was imported from China and pills etc., were manufactured in home-based pharmaceutical industries in Lahore. They also contained heavy metals that caused numerous chronic ailments. He said that sex problems could be cured, provided the patients consulted the right doctor at the right time.