This story is from September 23, 2016

Fake doctor held as drive in Tiruvallur intensifies

A month ago, when the state health department intensified its crackdown on quacks in Tiruvallur district following the deaths of eight children, it hoped to find a motley group of school dropouts and graduates with pretentious titles and forged certificates.
Fake doctor held as drive in Tiruvallur intensifies
CHENNAI: A month ago, when the state health department intensified its crackdown on quacks in Tiruvallur district following the deaths of eight children, it hoped to find a motley group of school dropouts and graduates with pretentious titles and forged certificates.
The department has now unearthed more than what it set out for. On Friday, officials from the department stumbled on two unrecognised paramedical institutes that churned out people claiming to be doctors and one `doctor' was arrested.

Officials were checking the papers of a woman in Padirivedu, who claimed to be a qualified doctor, when they discovered she also ran a paramedical institute above her clinic.
“The unit (A E G Paramedical Institute) trained people to be nursing assistants, but we discovered that none of the courses was recognized by any university,“ said D Mohanan, joint health director, Tiruvallur.The institute ran a series of short-term courses, none of which is recognized. Officials shut the institute and filed a police complaint.
Barely a kilometre away, they found another school, Aarokya Matha Trust paramedical institute, being run by a doctor's wife. The institute, too, had courses for nursing assistants, but many of the `successful' students put on the white coats. “Most of these students are locals from impoverished villages around. Some of them go on to assist doctors and then later start clinics on their own,“ said an official in the directorate of medical and rural health services.

E Prabhu, a quack officials nabbed from Padirivedu on Friday, is one such person. The 37-year-old, who managed to get a degree in literature from an open university, did a crash course in para-medicine. He worked for a year as a technician in an operation theatre, then trained under a Siddha practitioner for two months, before deciding to make a killing by playing doctor. He pretended to be a traditional medicine practitioner and set up a clinic in Madharpakkam.
“We found out he didn't just stick to traditional medicines. He prescribed allopathy drugs and even did suturing for wounds,” said Mohanan.
Since August, health department officials have nabbed as many as 24 quacks and shut down three unrecognied paramedical institutes, but they now suspect that there are a lot more fake doctors who have gone underground realising the heat was being turned on.
While the state government pats itself every time its officials nab a quack, public health activists say their actions have come in too late. “It took the deaths of eight children, some of who went to a quack before they sought real medical help, to spark the crackdown,“ said S Elango, former director of public health and preventive medicine.
He suggested enforcing a rule wherein all doctors are required to display their qualifications (with the names of the awarding colleges) and their registration numbers prominently on their boards. “This way, the patient just has to register their name and registration number on the internet to find if the doctor is real or fake,” he said.
There are around 1.09 lakh doctors registered with the Tamil Nadu medical council. The Indian Medical Association estimates there are more than 3,000 quacks practising across the state.
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