The Indian Express              02.08.2013

PMC sets up committee to identify bogus doctors

The committee will be headed by PMC Commissioner Mahesh Pathak and include Dr S T Pardeshi, acting chief medical officer, Dr Kishore Pakhare, assistant medical officer, apart from four zonal medical officers. An effort had earlier been launched by the district collector's office to conduct a massive crackdown on bogus doctors, while on their part, the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation too had initiated action against doctors three-four years ago.

This is, however, the first time that the PMC has decided to set up a committee based on government guidelines and conduct regular meetings to act on complaints against such doctors. Pardeshi said there are 2,119 dispensaries and 545 nursing homes currently. Medical officers will conduct inspections and check whether the doctors are qualified or not.

Pakhare said documents like degree certificates and registration with any of the medical councils will be checked. He admitted that so far there were 10 complaints and a meeting will be held soon. There are pending complaints too where patients have provided information about malpractices by certain doctors who claim to cure orthopaedic ailments. Initially, the drive will be to check whether the doctors are qualified, Pardeshi said, adding that if he/she does not have a qualification, a court case would be filed.

While the PMC has set up the committee for the first time, at the district collector's office, a committee set up for the same purpose has already taken decisive action against eight so-called doctors from the rural areas. Dr N D Deshmukh, member secretary of the committee and district health officer, said that they were not registered with any medical council. There is a disturbing trend though as once their dispensaries or places from where the 'fake' doctors operate are shut down, they move on to another village and start operations.

Dr Jayant Navrange, secretary of the medico-legal cell of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), said they had launched a similar activity a couple of years ago and names of 2,000 unqualified medical practitioners had been collated. The names were then submitted to the police commissioner's office, Navrange said.