ISLAMABAD - Taking serious notice of alleged medical neglect, President Asif Ali Zardari has instructed the Ministry of Health and Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) to work out a mechanism to check the growing incidents of negligence in medical treatment in hospitals. According to the spokesperson of the President Farhatullah Babar, the President issued these instructions after taking serious note of two recent incidents of alleged negligence in medical treatment, one in a private hospital in Lahore and the other in the Pakistan Institute Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad. The President has therefore directed both Ministry of Heath and PMDC to devise a Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) to deter effectively the recurrence of such incidents and also suggest a mechanism for punishing those found guilty of gross professional negligence.