PESHAWAR, Sept 13: The health department is yet to ensure presence of consultants in evening OPDs in the city's teaching hospitals, officials say here.

"The main problem in the way of the success of the evening OPD is the attitude of senior consultants, who stay away from it," they said, adding that the number of patients visiting in the evening has considerably declined since its launching one year ago.

The present NWFP government revoked the institution-based practice and launched free evening OPDs for low-income patients. Earlier, patients used to pay Rs300 as consultation fee but now the same doctors are required to examine patients on production of Rs5 OPD chit.

Sources said that many senior consultants send their junior colleagues while they themselves attend their private clinics in the evening. The doctors' schedule required them to attend hospitals between 3pm and 5pm but they do not observe the schedule. Many patients complained that even junior doctors arrive at the OPD at 4pm and stayed there only till 5pm.

An official at one of the hospitals said that the number of patients recorded on the inaugural day of the evening OPD was over 100 but it had now dropped to only 20.

"Doctors were earlier getting Rs180 per patient and that was why many of them took interest. The present system was totally voluntary and that is why it is destined to fail", the official said.

He said that some departments were facing an acute shortage of specialists and it would be very hard for them to depute a specialist to the evening OPD every day. He said that except for surgery and medicine, consultants of other specialities did visit the OPD.

Some doctors, he said, tended to suggest unnecessary diagnostic tests despite the non-availability of diagnostic services in the evening shift, forcing patients to go out to carry out these tests, adding that when they return, there were usually no doctor in the OPDs.

"As a result, patients are forced to visit private clinics where they pay Rs300 in consultation fee", he said. Doctors, however, defended their actions and argued that they had agreed with the government on doing free OPD on the condition that it would undo the Institution-Based Practice.

"The government has scrapped the practice, but it still exists on paper. We want its abolition notified," said an office- bearer of the Teacher Association of the Khyber Medical College.

He said that the practice was a threat for doctors and many of them feared that it would be implemented again. It was learnt that the government wanted to notify its abolition but the governor, the moving spirit behind the Institution-Based Practice, was the main obstacle in this regard.