The Punjab Healthcare Commission (PHC) has intensified its crackdown on quackery, sealing 692 illegal treatment centres during a four-week enforcement drive.
According to available data, these actions followed 3,014 visits by enforcement teams of the PHC’s Anti-Quackery Department to healthcare establishments across all districts of the province.
The highest number of raids was conducted in Lahore, where 1,105 healthcare facilities were visited, leading to the sealing of 303 illegal centres being run by unqualified individuals. Other districts with significant enforcement activity included Sargodha with 208 visits and 33 centres sealed, Multan with 204 visits and 29 centres sealed, Faisalabad with 154 visits and 34 centres sealed and Khanewal with 119 visits and 17 closures.
Districts such as Bahawalnagar, Attock, Chiniot, Gujranwala, Jhang, Rawalpindi, Rahim Yar Khan, Sheikhupura, Okara, Nankana Sahib and others also recorded multiple closures, showing that the campaign is intensive across both districts and their suburbs.
In addition to sealing 692 illegal treatment centres, enforcement teams identified 256 premises where earlier quackery-related businesses were either not found, had shifted to other locations or had been converted to other types of businesses.
A further 1,793 treatment centres where qualified medical practitioners were present at the time of visits have been marked for surveillance to ensure that lawful and safe medical practice continues on a sustained basis. This layered approach enables the Commission to focus both on outright quackery and continuous monitoring of facilities which claim compliance with regulatory standards.
A spokesperson for the PHC stated that the Commission’s sustained enforcement strategy has significantly changed the healthcare landscape in Punjab over the past several years.
Since the inception of the anti-quackery campaign, field teams have visited over 251,000 treatment centres across the province, permanently closing down approximately 64,700 illegal facilities and compelling over 30,200 unqualified practitioners to abandon their businesses.
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