LAHORE, Jan 5: Pakistan Academy of Family Physicians (PAFP) President Dr Tariq Mian has demanded the Punjab government establish a College of Family Medicine on the lines of European institutes.

He also asked the authorities to add a department of ‘family medicine’ at teaching and medical institutes across the province besides holding refresher courses at the government level for family physicians.

Speaking at the second day of the three-day Familycon conference organised by the PAFP on Saturday, Dr Mian also stressed the need for strengthening the referral system of patients from primary-level heath facility to the tertiary care institutions in order to facilitate patients and share unnecessary burden on the teaching health facilities.

Special Assistant to Chief Minister on Health Khwaja Salman Rafique inaugurated the second session of the conference. Former AIMC principal Prof Dr Javed Akram, PGMI and AIMC principals Prof Dr Anjum Habib Vohra and Prof Dr Mahmood Shaukat attended the conference besides MPA Dr Saeed Elahi and PMA leader Dr Ibrar Ashraf.

Dr Mian said drug reaction incidents occurred due to a partially functional Punjab Health Care Commission. He said by activating the PHCC, the government could easily eliminate quackery and misuse of life-saving drugs by drug mafia and addicts.

He also asked the government for installation of incinerators at various parts of the provincial capital to stop misuse of medical waste and avoid infection.

Prof Dr Javed Akram also emphasised the need to make PHCC fully functional to end criminal action against doctors on complaints of negligence. He said the PHCC should be given mandate to investigate such matters and fix responsibility on guilty doctors to avoid confrontation and differences between the medical community and the government by involving police or other law enforcement agencies.

Salman Rafique assured the participants of presenting recommendations of the medics and experts to the Punjab government for implementation. He said the PHCC would start functioning fully within a few months.

He said samples of the toxic cough syrup had been dispatched to laboratories abroad and the results were yet to arrive. He said the government had established a state-of-the-art Drug Testing Laboratory at Sundar Industrial Estate in Lahore while such labs would also be established in Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Bahawalpur in the near future