The proposed action plan of the Tamil Nadu government to weed out quacks operating in the state may soon take off, as the Tamil Nadu Medical Council (TNMC) has forwarded the updated database of registered allopathic doctors in the state to the concerned departments.

Top-level sources with TNMC told Pharmabiz that the action plan would involve multi-level law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies like IMA and TNMC. As per the deadline of December 31 2003, about 12,000 practicing allopathic doctors in the state had re-registered with TNMC, which has a database of over 75,000 doctors. A hardcopy of the whole database was submitted to the State Health Minister, last month. Soon, TNMC will issue digital copies of the database to top authorities of the State Health department and Joint Directors Health Services in various zones, besides the district collectors and district police superintends in all the 45 districts.

"By this database, it is easy to monitor the details of registered and unregistered doctors operating in all the districts. Since the medical council does not have any legal power to book the quacks, the district collector and police officials could swing into action with the readily available data. They also have various intelligence sources," noted M Balasubramanian, president of TNMC.

Sources also said that the various branches of the Indian Medical Association would lend necessary help and information to the enforcement agencies in combing the operating quacks. It is to be noted that the State Health Minister N Thalavai Sundaram had recently said the government would take stringent action and launch a hunt for quacks, including various unregistered medical practitioners of Indian Systems of Medicine, operating in the state.

The Tamil Nadu State Medical Council (TNSMC) is also implementing a strict revised code of ethics for doctors, which mandates them to display a medical registration number and other recognized medical degrees prominently visible to the patients, besides maintaining proper medical records.