PESHAWAR, April 22: Patients of the Mental Hospital, Peshawar, continue to suffer due to doctors’ and medicine-sellers’ grievances against the provincial government for banning the private practice of government-employed doctors.

Patients claim that medicine sellers are supplying them with medicines different from those prescribed by their doctors.

The attendants report that doctors become angry when patients buy medicines from brands or stores not recommended by them.

In one case, patients tried to return medicines to, Zeeshan Medicos, located on the ground floor of Khyber Medical Centre, Dabgari Gardens, after being scolded by their doctor.

The shop owner, Arshad, first refused to take them back since the drugs were multi-national products. He then claimed that doctors only recommended medicines from companies that paid them commissions.

The doctor, who was upset about the ban on private practice, blamed the attendants for repeatedly failing to buy the medicines he prescribes.

Other medicines-sellers in the Dabgari Gardens area, where private clinics and medical centres abound, said that the doctors’ community wanted to settle the score with the government, over the ban on private practice, by inconveniencing patients at public hospitals.

In most cases, the medicines prescribed by the doctors in the three major hospitals of the city, besides other small hospitals, are hardly available in the market.

The medicine-sellers fear that if this trend persists, patients will not receive the care they deserve, unless the government makes amends.