PESHAWAR, May 11: The increasing number of fake homoeopath doctors operating in Peshawar and elsewhere in the province, has become a source of concern to the patients, medical experts told Dawn here on Tuesday.

In the past few years, the number of homoeopath doctors has increased, with about 200 clinics operating in Peshawar city alone. According to a doctor, these unauthorised clinicians lure the patients through advertisements.

There are stickers and posters pasted on the walls and in buses, offering guaranteed treatment to all sorts of ailments within affordable cost, said the doctors.

The situation in the far-flung areas of the province is all the more damaging where these so-called doctors have established themselves to squeeze patients. The main problem lies with the local department of health officials who receive bribes from these doctors and allow them to play havoc with the health of poor patients.

The situation has further been aggravated by the fact that they get degrees from the privately-run colleges teaching homeopathy. Every small and big town of NWFP has at least two colleges offering degrees in homeopathic medicine to the aspirants.

Admission to a course of studies at colleges, most of them housed in two rooms only, cannot be termed as merit-based. There are no formal structures like classes or qualified teachers or proper prescribed courses or laboratories and other infrastructure required of a medical college, and their main focus is to obtain money from those wanting to learn homeopatic medicine and award them degrees.

A senior physician told Dawn that the government should take concrete steps to regulate the practice of homeopaths and save the patients. He said that homeopathy was a genuine branch of medicine in India and Bangladesh where the governments had made elaborate arrangements to formalise education in this field by establishment of colleges and hospitals.

He said proper legislation was necessary to regulate homeopathy in the country. A health official, meanwhile told Dawn that the government was in the process of establishing health regulatory authority (HRA), which would help regulate the practice of the doctors as well as business of drugs and functioning of the diagnostic centres.