Assessment & Prevalence of Malpractice of Quacks

Survey of District Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber Pakhtoon Khwa Pakistan

Abstract

Current study was conducted to address the problem of quackery that is widespread in Dera Ismail Khan (DIK) Pakistan. During this study number of quacks and Qualified professionals in these areas and different ways of malpractice, practiced by the quacks were included. The study was conducted in all the urban, rural and semi urban area of DIK. Survey based on questionnaire was conducted distributing one in general populations and 2nd distributed among the quacks in the rural, urban and semi urban areas of DIK. Sample size of 150 was set in this regard. The three months duration study was performed to assess their malpractice regarding quacks and what knowledge they have. A questionnaire to approach the behavior of quacks regarding their practice consisting of 11 questions was also designed to analyze ways of quackery, government role and awareness of people about the quackery. Quacks mostly cater to people who are lower middle and lower socioeconomic class, having no approach to qualified practitioners. The public is not quality conscious and they seek to relive the pains with restricted budgets. These quackers consider them a qualified practioners and people having less knowledge of its outcomes and possessing poverty, expose to poor health practices. This leads to spread of other fatal diseases like AIDS, hepatitis and cancer. In order to reduce probability of exposure to unsafe healthcare practices, Government must have proper check and balance so that it may be proactively addressed by shutting down all unlicensed practitioners and also educating the community to discourage the malpractices in field of health.