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Federal Health Commission to legalise acupuncture: minister

LAHORESTATE Minister for National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination Saira Afzal Tarar has said that the government is going to establish a Federal Health Commission to legalise various recognised modes of treatment such as acupuncture.She was speaking at the 1st International Conference on Acupuncture and Complementary Alternative Medicine (ACUCAM 2015)

By our correspondents
January 28, 2015
LAHORE
STATE Minister for National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination Saira Afzal Tarar has said that the government is going to establish a Federal Health Commission to legalise various recognised modes of treatment such as acupuncture.
She was speaking at the 1st International Conference on Acupuncture and Complementary Alternative Medicine (ACUCAM 2015) on the topic of ‘Comprehensive Care of Patient - Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow through Acupuncture (Traditional Chinese Mode of Treatment) with Modern Techniques’ organised by Mir Khalil-ur-Rahman Memorial Society (Jang Group of Newspapers) in collaboration with Iffat Anwar School of Acupuncture and Complementary Medicine, here at a local hotel.
She announced introducing Prime Minister’s Health Insurance Scheme with a view to providing basic health services to the poor living below poverty line. She regretted that quality healthcare services were still far from the people’s reach, and stressed the need to create awareness among the people to prevent diseases. ‘We cannot just blame government for everything happening to us,’ she said. She stressed on medics and paramedics to come forward and offer services to work in remote areas of the country. She stressed to strengthen routine immunisation as we had failed to eradicate polio from Pakistan so far, which was a shame as it had been eliminated in the world except in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. She lamented that Pakistan topped the list of countries with highest ratio of maternal and child mortality in the world. ‘We have also been lagging behind in ensuring breastfeeding, which happens to be the teaching of Islam,’ she regretted. Despite all these failures and disappointments, she said Pakistan was committed to improve its health indicators through improvement of health delivery system. She said the government was going to introduce legislation to obtain reliable data regarding diseases and other areas, so as to deal with the health issues systematically. ‘The government has already announced its drug policy, which will help to streamline pharmaceutical industry in the country,’ she added.
Adviser to Chief Minister on Health Khawaja Salman Rafiq said the Punjab government would be willing to introduce acupuncture as another mode of treatment in public hospitals after proper legislation. In this regard, he said a series of meetings would be arranged with health authorities of Punjab and acupuncturists to devise a strategy to make legislation to officially start this mode of treatment in hospitals in the province. ‘The acupuncturists should give a programme to convince the health authorities to introduce this mode of treatment in hospitals of Punjab,’ he added.
Presently, he said the Punjab government was focusing in primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare to provide quality health services to the people in the province, adding that Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif would announce an additional package next month for those willing to serve in remote areas of the province.
Director General Health Punjab Dr Zahid Pervaiz said quacks were ruling the roost, who were playing havoc with the lives of patients, adding that the government was working to curb the menace of quackery from the province. ‘A draft bill will soon be presented in the Punjab Assembly for approval of the house to make legislation to eradicate the menace of quackery in the province,’ he added. He suggested to the acupuncturists to set up an institution on the lines of College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP) for proper recognition of their qualifications and degrees.
Pakistan Red Crescent Chairman Dr Saeed Elahi urged the government to patronise acupuncture mode of treatment to benefit from it as other parts of the world were already benefitting from this Chinese mode of treatment. International Pain Physician & Acupuncturist Dr Shahzad Anwar, while delivering a lecture on ‘Integration of Laser Acupuncture, Photo Bio Modulation (PBM) and Adipose Derived Stem Cell Therapy for the treatment of Neuro-Degenerative & Neuro-Developmental Diseases,’ said at least 25,000 acupuncturists were providing relief to the patients in Pakistan, adding that government must patronise this mode of treatment so that people could get quality treatment at nominal price.
Besides, Head of Department of Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine, Islamic International Medical College, Rawalpindi Brig (r) Prof Dr M Saleem, Dean IASACM Dr Ahmad Bhatti, Registrar IASACM Saleem Akhtar, Dr Mohsin, Dr Sardar Sukhinder Singh and others said that acupuncture mode of treatment could relieve patients from backache, sciatica, knee joint pain, osteoarthritis, neck pain, headache and other medical complications, which showed 75 to 95 percent success ratio.
Chairman MKRMS Wasif Nagi hosted the seminar, while Ali Imran, Kashan Haider, Fatima Nadeem Butt and Shahzad Rauf assisted him.
Later, Saira Afzal Tarar, Khawaja Salman Rafiq and Dr Saeed Elahi distributed shields among the organisers of the conference.