HEALTH, as they say, is wealth. However, in our country, this wealth is at risk owing to private doctors and fake drugs. As public-sector hospitals do not provide quality treatment, people opt for private doctors and a massive majority of these private doctors happens to be full-time government employees.

They treat patients in government-run hospitals in the morning — at least officially, if not practically — and at their private clinics in the evening. The fact is that these doctors do not provide as good a treatment in public hospitals as they do in their private clinics. Furthermore, they get a salary in the morning even if they do nothing, and earn a hefty per-patient fee in the evening. The sustainability of the practice is naturally dependent on them providing the necessary treatment efficiently and with due professional courtesy.

Besides, it is a well-known fact that doctors in their private practice, apart from charging exorbitant fees, tend to prescribe medicines manufactured by companies that ‘compensate’ them in cash and kind, or both.

Additionally, I have recently noticed an intriguing pattern. My mother is a diabetic. As quality treatment is not provided at public hospitals, I get my mother checked by a private doctor every month. One day, I observed that during every check-up, the doctor was changing the medicine for the same disease. He prescribed new medicines for the same disease at every check-up.

For example, if he had prescribed medicine ‘A’ for blood pressure at one visit, he would prescribe medicine ‘B’ for blood pressure in the next visit.

Both A and B were local medicines with the same approach to controlling hyper- tension. The doctor was obviously doing this solely with the aim of keeping both the companies happy. Why else would he do that?

It is tragic that neither the government nor the health department seems to care about such happenings. There are no professional checks and balances on the practice of medicine. The relevant authorities should take an immediate and decisive action against all sorts of illegal practices prevalent in the health sector.

G. Akbar Palijo
Larkana

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2024