Claim: Pakistani doctors were called expensive and worthless by BBC News, Pakistani doctors do not meet international medical standards, and numerous facts and figures from a recent study in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences show their incompetence.
Fact: These claims are false or misleading. BBC News has not published any such story or study about Pakistani doctors.
On 18 July 2023, Twitter user @Rafi_Shaair posted a tweet that said a recent study in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences quoted by BBC News reveals the incompetence of Pakistani doctors. The viral post claims 89% of general practitioners do not write their names on prescriptions, 78% do not include a diagnosis, and 58% have illegible handwriting. Additionally, it was claimed the research found that 63% of prescriptions contain errors, and 55% do not indicate the duration of taking the drug.
On the same day, Facebook user Sagheer Mazari shared a similar post on his profile that said according to a BBC report, Pakistani doctors have been criticised globally for being costly and ineffective.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check searched for the original source of these claims and found that they are false or misleading for several reasons.
Firstly, BBC News has not published any such story or study about Pakistani doctors on its website or social media platforms. A search on the BBC News website for the keywords “Pakistani doctors” did not yield any results showing that a recent article has claimed such a thing as mentioned in the claim section above.
A specific search on Google for the keywords used in the tweet and the post also did not find any matching article on the BBC News website or elsewhere.
While searching the statistics mentioned in the claim on Google search, Soch Fact Check found a study by Dr Usman Ahmad Raza titled, “Prescription patterns of general practitioners in Peshawar, Pakistan ” published in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences (PJMS) on 30 May 2014.
Soch Fact Check found the figures mentioned in Twitter user @Rafi_Shaair’s Tweet are actually from this dated study published nine years ago in 2014. A cross-sectional survey of drug prescriptions conducted between April and May 2011 at six major hospitals and pharmacies in Peshawar analysed 1097 prescriptions containing 3640 drugs to assess completeness, average number of drugs, prescription frequency of various drug classes, and number of brands prescribed. The study found that:
- Only 11% of prescriptions had prescriber’s name
- Only 22% had diagnosis
- Only 42% had legible handwriting
- Only 37% had the dosage mentioned
- Only 45% had duration of treatment
The study concluded that “Quality of written prescriptions was poor in terms of completeness.” However, this study cannot be generalised to all Pakistani doctors or even all doctors in Peshawar, as it was based on a sample size of around 1000 prescriptions only. On 8 April 2014, news website DailyPakistan published an article with the headline “Pakistani doctors declared expensive and worthless”. This article also contained the same claims and cited the PJMS article as the source. This article is misleading because it generalises the results of the study carried out in Peshawar to doctors all over Pakistan.
In summary, it is false that BBC News published a story or a study that called Pakistani doctors expensive and worthless and misleading to claim that numerous facts and figures from a recent study in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences show their incompetence.
Virality
The tweet by @Rafi_Shaair has been viewed over 27,500 times.
We also found that this claim was even more widely shared on Facebook here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. It was also shared by the digital news organisation Daily Pakistan.
Conclusion: Twitter user @Rafi_Shaair, Facebook user Sagheer Mazari and News website Daily Pakistan are claiming that Pakistani doctors were called expensive and worthless by BBC News, Pakistani doctors do not meet international medical standards, and numerous facts and figures from a recent study in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences show their incompetence. These claims are false or misleading. BBC News has not published any such story or study about Pakistani doctors. The figures mentioned in DailyPakistan’s news report and Twitter user @Rafi_Shaair’s Tweet are actually from a dated study published nine years ago in 2014. The study is also limited, focusing on only one city of one province, Peshawar.