KARACHI, Sept 3: The Pakistan Dental Association has underscored the need to update the syllabuses of the bachelors-level and postgraduate programmes which are offered to the students in the local dental colleges.

The president of the Sindh’s chapter of the PDA, Mehmood Shah, speaking at a national symposium the other day, called upon the authorities to immediately stop further establishment of dental colleges in the private sector.

The new institutions, he said, must fulfil the relevant criterion with regard to faculty. Mr Shah observed with regret that a 30-year-old and outdated syllabus was being taught in these colleges with negligible facilities for hands-on-training.

The number of dentists was insufficient when the rapidly growing population was taken into account. According to him, the inadequately trained professionals churned out by the ‘substandard’ institutions, instead of providing support to the public, may appear as an additional threat.

Giving data of the qualified dentists practising in Karachi, he said the ratio came to one practitioner for every 7,000 people in Karachi, one against 30,000 in the interior, and one to 200,000 in the very remote areas like Thar.

Dr Shah said concrete recommendation to address the situation had been dispatched to the Pakistan Medical Dental Council and Ministry of Health from the platform of PDA-Sindh, adding that these were backed up by 96 per cent of the dental surgeons.

Dental experts from different parts of the province present on the occasion reviewed the current dental education system at the postgraduate level, especially the syllabus and performance of dental educational institutions, and put forward their recommendations.

The participants were told that the PDA-Sindh had suggested to the College of Physicians and Surgeons that the MCPS programme in dental education be restarted and the number of supervisors and number of FCPS centres be increased.

Speaking on the occasion, Prof Raza Sheikh of the Liaquat University of Medical Sciences, Jamshoro, said the PMDC should try to increase the number of the faculty members associated with private dental colleges.—APP