Just Rs 250 fine for fake degree! Quacks won’t stop

Amarnath, his wife and two children, form part of the crowd at Dr Sharma’s dispensary at Kalyanpuri. Amarnath has been ill for the last 10 days. He saw a “registered medical practitioner” (as non-MBBS quacks call themselves) in Khichdipur and was taking six pills thrice a day. He stopped them after three days as he started passing blood and his stomach hardened. The doctor asked for an X-ray but they stopped the drugs and chose to seek Sharma’s opinion.

Rathiram, brother of Amarnath, accompanied them to Sharma’s clinic. He too had problems, caused or aggravated by “treatment”given by the same family quack.

He still hold that the quack was good enough for his family most ofthe time. He just faltered sometimes, he says. Rathiram believes that some doctors are good for some patients and some are good for others. Besides who has the time to go to crowded government hospitals? The good doctors are beyond our means too,” he says. He and his brother paid over Rs 400 to Sharma to rectify the errors made by their family quack.

In fact, just last year in a case that showed how dreadful the results of such practices could be a young man shot a quack dead in Sultanpuri. He said the quack had caused his wife’s death. While the quackery bit was never investigated by the police, a murder case was promptly filed against the husband.

The quack had reportedly given some drugs to the wife as she was not conceiving children. The woman felt she was pregnant but after eight months it turned out that she was not bearing a child at all. She later developed septicemia and bled to death.

Whether it is fever, cold or fertility, quacks offer dangerous remedies without compunction. In the case ofchildless women for instance, they give steroids which can lead to fluid retention and make the abdomen swell. They can then claim that the women is pregnant. Such practices continue as successive governments have put the Anti-Quackery Bill in cold storage. The Delhi Government has promised to take up the Bill which the previous government failed to push through.