This was claimed by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Senator Azam Khan Swati at a meeting Senate Standing Committee on National Health Services, Regulations and Co-ordination held here with Senator Sajjad Hussain Turi in the chair at Parliament House on Thursday.
Upon hearing this, the committee directed Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) to initiate action against the institutions awarding fake medical degrees and offering fake medical courses to students, seal such institutions forthwith, besides referring their cases to Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for further legal action.
Discussing illegal transplantation of human organs, Senator Azam Swati said the business is rampant across the country and this has reached up to $2bn. He said that many fake medical practitioners coerce poor people into selling their kidneys just for Rs 50,000 and then sell each kidney to influential patients for Rs 5m. He said the government had committed to legislate on the issue, but it has yet to bring forth its human organs transplantation bill for the approval.
The additional secretary of the ministry informed the committee members that a bill is being prepared for the purpose, but its implementation will be limited to the federal capital only as the subject has been devolved to provinces after the passage of 18th constitutional amendment.
He suggested the committee members to establish a federal organisation that could check illegal transplantation of human organs across the country. The PMDC president informed the committee members that around 40 per cent people in the world donate their organs, but the ratio is almost zero in Pakistan, and this requires creating awareness among the masses about the issue.
He also informed the committee that some doctors involved in illegal human organs transplantation in Islamabad have left the city and law-enforcement agencies have been trying to arrest them. Briefing the committee about action taken against `fake' doctors, the PMDC chief said that the council has not received complaints about the `fake' doctors since the up-gradation of the online system.
About spurious drugs, the ministry's additional secretary told the committee members that a bar coding system is being implemented in over 100 countries of the world to check spurious medicines and this would also be implemented in Pakistan in the next three years.
The committee chairman said that private hospitals have been fleecing patients on the pretext of providing them better health facilities, besides the fees of their doctors was beyond the reach of a common man. The committee was also informed that Pakistan Institute of Modern Studies, Institute of Management and Health, and Modern Institute of Informatics and Medicines are not registered with the PMDC.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017