KARACHI, Aug 24: The College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPSP) may withdraw accreditation of some of the institutes it recognises for training of its diploma and fellowship trainees in view of their substandard faculty and inadequate facilities.

This was stated by CPSP President Professor Zafar Ullah Chaudhry and Vice-President Prof Abdullah Jan Jaffar at a press conference held at the college premises on Friday.

They said that the CPSP was consistently in the pursuit of excellence and wanted to develop and maintain its academic standards at the highest level to attain a distinguished position among the sister international institutions, and had recently embarked upon an exercise aimed at re-inspecting and evaluating the affiliated institutes.

The exercise, to discover the training deficiencies at over 217 accredited institutes, has been undertaken for the first time since 1965.

“Those (institutes) which are not up to the mark will certainly be penalised, including suspension or withdrawal of recognition,” said Prof Chaudhry, adding that the inspection of the institutes would be completed in a transparent way in the next six months and would also be continued as a regular feature after every four years.

The CPSP president said that the physicians and surgeons’ college, which was founded in 1962 offering training to medical graduates in three specialities, was now awarding about 1,000 fellowships in 54 specialities and sub-specialities every year, while there were about 1,430 supervisors, including 59 from overseas, for postgraduate medical training and research.

“Our fellowship programmes are acknowledged internationally and it gives me pleasure to say that the CPSP’s fellowship is now recognised second to the MRCP (UK) as far as specialist qualifications are concerned,” Prof Chaudhry added.

Talking about various training and diploma programmes of the college, he said that the college would shortly be offering, for the first time in the country, advance training in trauma life support and cardiac life support to local doctors and paramedics, charging nominal fees in comparison to developed countries.