PESHAWAR, April 28: Provincial Health Minister Inayatullah Khan declared in categorical terms on Wednesday that the provincial government would not allow import of Indian, Iranian and Chinese medicines on the pretext that their drugs were cheaper and better in quality.
The local pharmaceutical industrial units would suffer a setback if the restriction on its import was lifted. The health minister was speaking at a day-long seminar on "Health care regulations" here at Lady Reading Hospital, organized by the Postgraduate Medical Institute.
Mr Inayatullah said that over 500 pharmaceutical units were operating in the country, manufacturing quality products at reasonable rates. He said multinational companies were engaged in a baseless propaganda campaign against local manufacturers.
He said a 500-bed hospital in Swat and a 300-bed hospital in Bannu were being established which would be equipped with latest equipments of international standard.
The minister said that specialist doctors, trained nurses and qualified paramedics would also be deployed at district hospitals to lessen burden on big hospitals in Peshawar.
He said out of 900 basic health units in the province, 600 were under-utilized, and as such LHVs and dispensers in remote and far-flung areas were functioning as doctors.
Mr Inayatullah did not agree with the assertions of a member of the HRA while unfolding recommendations of the seminar that the government had no objective, policy or target in the health sector.
He said the health policy was very much there which might need improvement as room for improvement was always there. Earlier, Prof Abdul Mateen read out recommendations of the seminar. -APP
Our Correspondent adds: Other speakers in their speeches stressed the need for application of stringent laws to regulate medical profession, diagnostic services and sale of drugs in the province.
They also raised concern over attitude of the people associated with medical profession. "Doctors should ask themselves why people prefer to visit quacks than genuine practitioners. Doctors do not pay attention to patients' complaints in a manner quacks do," MNA Dr Donya Aziz lamented while speaking on the occasion.
Dr Donya Aziz was of the view that the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), being a supervisory body, had also failed to check malpractice in the medical profession. "No action is taken against doctors in case of complaints against them. The situation only leads to production of practitioners not fit for the job," she remarked.
Speaking on the occasion, chief technical adviser of the GTZ Dr Franz Von Roenne said that in most of the poor countries the affluent class got more attention of the doctors due to their wealth, status and education background.
Lack of knowledge on the part of the poor also put them at the receiving end, he said and added that funds earmarked for provision of subsidised treatment to poor was also consumed by the well-off people due to their connections with the doctors.
"Doctors concentrate more on treatment of patients than focussing on preventive measures, because treatment earn them profit," he said. Pakistan College of Pathologists President Manzoor Ahmed in his speech said that a number of fake and substandard diagnostic laboratories had sprung up all over the country which did not follow rules and regulations set by the authorities.
Citing a study, he said that out of 81 laboratories in Rawalpindi-Islamabad, only 35 had the services of trained pathologists. "The number of pathologists in Pakistan is only 1,000, which means that for every one million people, we have only 3.2 pathologists. Whereas in UK, there are 109 pathologists for one million," he added.