KARACHI: US-based doctors offer help in health education
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Dec 19: A group of Pakistani medical professionals based in North America on Tuesday expressed their dissatisfaction over medical education and training in Pakistan and offered their help for the improvement of curricula for medical institutions and the basic healthcare system in the country.
The doctors are visiting Pakistan under the auspices of the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America (APPNA). At a press conference on Tuesday, the team’s leader and President APPNA, Dr Rashid Piracha, said that the Pakistani doctors based in North America were already contributing to the Pakistani population through different projects in the education and health sectors.
Flanked by Dr Habib-ur-Rehman Soomro, Secretary-General of the Pakistan Medical Association, Dr Piracha and his team members, Dr Adeel A. Butt and Rizwan C. Naeem, said that there was room for betterment in medical students education in the country to make them competent and compete with medical graduates in the west.
“We feel that medical education and training in Pakistan should be organised on scientific basis and APPNA is ready to help,” Dr Piracha said.
He said APPNA would also focus its efforts on improving the basic health structure in the country. “We have already started with some of the quarters concerned including academicians and identified many issues that need to be addressed,” he said.
APPNA suggested that the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council be made a true autonomous body which could work in close collaboration with international councils with complete transparency, and without any interference from the government.
The PMDC should work as a regulatory body for standardisation of medical education, teaching institutes and also act to discipline the profession like other regulatory bodies in the world, said the APPNA members.
APPNA would also like to support primary healthcare in Pakistan, while hoping that Pakistani authorities would give a priority to the issue of the common man’s health, said Dr Piracha, adding that Pakistan needed investment in the development of infrastructure of health as it did not have the adequate strength of trained nurses, midwives, paramedics in special nursing and also lacked a healthy working environment for them.
Earlier during the day the visiting APPNA delegation took part in a seminar on career counselling, which was organised by the Dow University of Health Sciences for local medical students and doctors.
In his speech, DUHS Vice-Chancellor Prof Masood Hameed Khan said that medical was a very sensitive and important field and as such medical graduates as well as the students should have clear thinking about their profession. Doctors sincere with their work were welcomed in professional field everywhere in the world, while those who were not trained and dedicated were rejected, he added.
Other speakers, including the APPNA visitors, discussed career opportunities in Pakistan and abroad, research track and research careers, pharmaceutical careers, preparing a competitive residency application and how to interview. There are 1,000 Pakistani physicians working in pharmaceutical companies in the USA, said a speaker.
