The Karnataka Ayurveda and Unani Practitioners Board has decided to distribute biometric registration certificates to doctors of these systems of medicine in a bid to crack down on quacks. The Board estimates the number of fake doctors in the State at more than one lakh.
The Board, which came into existence in 1965, has so far distributed manual certificates to 33,000 doctors and they will soon get biometric ones. Distributing smart cards with biometric registration will help check the increasing number of fake doctors, say Board officials.
The manual certificates, which had the doctor’s photo affixed, made it easy to duplicate them by replacing the photos. There is a huge racket operating in the State, selling fake certificates at Rs three lakh to Rs five lakh each.
Fingerprints and digital signatures of doctors enrolling themselves with the Board are taken and their marks cards scanned. The doctors’ pictures are taken with the help of the computers. All documents are then barcoded.
The certificates that are then generated will have a unique registration number, hologram, microprint, water mark logo , invisible logo, designed border and 2 D barcode.
Kiran Kumar, Managing Director of the V Works Software, Bangalore, has developed the necessary software, at a cost of Rs five lakh. Doctors can get the barcoded certificates online also, through the website: www.kaupboard.karnataka.gov.in. The barcoded certificates can be got even on mobile phones which have internet connection. This will make it easy to crosscheck for fake ones.
Board chairperson Dr Satyamurthy Bhat told Deccan Herald that they had taken such an initiative for the first time in the country, something that neither the Indian Medical Council nor the Karnataka Medical Council has done. Once the project is over, the Board will start raiding the clinics of fake doctors, he said.