Rusted nails hold used infusion tubes on the wall of a clinic run by one among hundreds of thousands of unqualified doctors operating across Pakistan.
Every day, dozens of patients visit the small roadside shop in Sindh Province, where a few chairs are arranged around wooden tables used to lay patients down.
“These patients have faith in me. They believe I can treat them well,” said Abdul Waheed, who opened the facility a few months ago outside Hyderabad.
Photo: AFP
During the day, the 48-year-old works at a private hospital, and in the evenings, he comes to the village of Tando Saeed Khan to see patients at his clinic, charging 300 rupees (US$1) per consultation.
There is no signboard and no registration number, and he has no legal authorization to practice as a doctor.
Waheed, who has a diploma in homeopathy and has completed a four-year nursing course, spoke with confidence, and insisted that patients come to him willingly and trust his abilities.
“No one has questioned me yet. If someone comes, I will see what to do,” he said, reflecting the ease with which unqualified people practice medicine in Pakistan.
Such unlicensed clinics are often the first, and sometimes the only, point of care for poor communities.
Pakistan Medical Association Secretary-General Abdul Ghafoor Shoro said there are “more than 600,000 fake doctors” operating across the country.
This nationwide figure has been confirmed by the Sindh Healthcare Commission (SHCC), based on estimates from the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council.
Calling the practice a public health epidemic, Shoro said that such practitioners work with doctors, learn a few things there and then open their own clinics.
“Unqualified doctors don’t know the side effects and exact dosage of medicines. If a disease is not properly diagnosed, it can become dangerous,” Shoro said. “The instruments they use are not sterilized. They simply wash them with water and continue using them. They reuse syringes, which increases the spread of hepatitis and AIDS.”
Medical experts said this unchecked practice has a direct impact on Pakistan’s already strained healthcare system, with tertiary care hospitals overwhelmed by patients whose conditions worsen after improper treatment.
Civil Hospital Karachi head Khalid Bukhari said the facility regularly receives such cases.
“They misdiagnose and mistreat patients. Our hospital is overloaded. Most of the cases we receive are those ruined by them,” Bukhari said. “These people are playing with the lives of poor citizens. If people go to proper doctors and receive precise treatment, they will not need to come to us.”
Regulatory authorities acknowledge their failure to control the problem.
“We have limited resources. This practice cannot be eliminated easily. If we shut down 25 outlets, 25 new ones open the very next day,” Sindh HealthCare Commission (SHCC) head Ahson Qavi Siddiqi said.
“The law against it is weak. We file cases, but the accused get bail the next day because it is a bailable offence,” Siddiqi said, adding that inspection teams also face serious security threats.
“These people are influential in their areas. In many cases, our teams are taken hostage. We are fired upon. I don’t have the force to take strong action,” he said.
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