Amid All Hitech Buzz, Desi Sex Doctors Thrive In Hyderabad 

Srinivas G. Roopi

Hyderabad: With his roadside clinic hardly a mile away from Hitech City, Gulab Singh is busy prescribing medicines for diseases ranging from asthma, sugar, piles, constipation, blood pressure, liver problems to joint and back pain. This clinic housed in a small tent is specially visited by patients suffering from sex-related problems. The ‘doctors’ at these clinics, which crop up at isolated places close to high profile areas like Hitech City and Ameerpet every now and then, claim that they have 'guaranteed cure' for sex-related problems of men and women as well.

Sexual weakness, lack of vitality and even problem related to the size of the male organ, can be cured, claims Gulab Singh, a traditional herbal doctor from Maharashtra. Gulab visits Hyderabad for three months every year as he camps in New Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai during the other months. You may think he is just setting up his tent by the road and wonder as to who might consult him in this highly educated city. You will be shocked to know the extent of business he does -- anything ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 a day on an average.

The herbal doctors charge only Rs 50 for consultancy and Rs 500 for the medicines which they sell. They prescribe only herbs which they claim to have been procured from forests of Kerala in the South and Himalayas and Nepal in the North. " None of the herbs we give the patients is harmful or has side effects," says Gulab. The herbal medicines contain Amla, ginger, garlic, roots of medicinal plants, herbal oils, etc.

How can these simple herbs cure such serious illnesses? "We prepare medicines using these ingredients in certain proportions," Gulab said and claimed that he learnt the medical system from his ancestors.

If they did not see result, would they not hold me by the scruff of the neck? asks Gulab saying that his prescriptions work effectively. He says he has regular and recurring clientele.

Doctors With Doubtful Credentials

These uneducated doctors treating highly educated modern patients is one extreme, while another extreme opposite relates to doctors without medical degrees who are setting up clinics all around the city.. People with some clinical experience are setting up First Aid Clinics in many areas of the city.

This doctor in Moosapet, Dr. Vijayasree, wrote her registered number as 100. While the Regd. No. 100 belongs to Budhvarapu Krishna Rao in 1960 according to the Medical Council of India records, this doctor has boldly put up her sign board at the clinic claiming to be a women and child specialist and has a roaring practice. She did not even bother to give a clarification on her registration number when this reporter visited her clinic which was bursting with patients.

Another Ayurveda doctor, Dr G. Bhaskar, a yards away from Dr. Vijayasree's Akhil Clinic, claims that his Regd. No. is 664 which was also registered in the 1960s. When contacted, Bhaskar said the registration was done in 1989. Since he is just around 40 years old, he must have been a primary school student at that time.

Neither the MCI nor any state agency has any control over the quacks who are treating patients without qualifications. Whenever something goes wrong or a death is reported, some knee-jerk action is taken, such as locking the clinic or booking a case against the doctor in question, but nothing beyond such token punitive measures.

On the other hand, if people choose to go to corporate hospitals, they are penalized indiscriminately. "When I visited Prathima Hospital in KPHB for treatment for fever, they charged Rs400 as consultancy fee. And you know what the doctor prescribed me after the examination? He asked me to take Dolo tablet which I otherwise was taking even before visiting the hospital. He did not even examine my illness deeply. After two days, when I visited another doctor, I was diagnosed with Dengue fever which would have been avoided if the previous doctor had given proper medicine that time," laments Rachana, a PG student of JNTU.

Whether it's roadside traditional herbal doctors or small clinics run by fake doctors or even corporate hospitals, there is no guarantee of cure but one's health seems to be entirely a question of fate or destiny.