February 16, 2008	Saturday	Safar 08, 1429

KARACHI, Feb 15: A senior health practitioner has renewed calls for the restructuring of the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC).

Appearing unconvinced with the stance that the PMDC is efficiently regulating medical education in the country, Dr Shershah Syed said at a press conference on Friday that the situation obtaining at the PMDC was not as good as portrayed by its high-ups.

The medical practitioner, who held various posts in the Pakistan Medical Association and was elected to the PMDC as a member from the Sindh constituency of medical professionals about six months ago, said: “I have decided to mobilise civil society and groups of professionals to save the PMDC from becoming a toothless body suited to the whims of influential quarters or medical mafia.”

With the support of the PMA and the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association, he said he would hold meetings in medical colleges across the country for the survival of justice and merit in the PMDC affairs. He said that it was due to aspirations of some ‘ill-motivated’ members that he was being kept away from PMDC meetings as they feared resistance from the genuinely elected professionals.

However, taking exception to some recent statements about the council made by PMA and PIMA leaders, PMDC vice-president Prof Masood Hameed Khan, who is also Dow varsity’s vice-chancellor, said on Thursday that the council comprised the medical education elite and the claim that it was dominated by personnel coming from private colleges was false and baseless.

About Dr Shershah’s election to the council in August last, he said the representatives of registered medical practitioners of Sindh had elected him in a fair and transparent election and the health ministry had also issued a notification regarding his membership in the council in the official gazette, which had now been stayed by the Sindh High Court.

Dr Shershah told Dawn that he was never told about the court order in writing from the PMDC and he came to know by some quarters only, while he was preparing to attend the 110th meeting of the PMDC, scheduled for February 11, agenda and relevant working papers of which had already been delivered to him.

“Had I been at the meeting, I would have given my dissent on various items and approval of the council, including the plan to bring some changes in the PMDC regulations and rules to oust a council secretary, HEC’s involvement in medical education, raise in the number of admission seats in medical colleges in the absence of relevant facilities and faculty, semester system in medical colleges, declaring foreign students without clearing physics section of qualifying tests eligible for medical college admission,” he added.

He said that restructuring of the council was required to scrutinise its working and the procedure of giving recognition to colleges, which did not meet even the basic criteria.

He alleged that a medical college got PMDC’s recognition for its MBBS programme though it admitted 126 students in violation of the allocated seats. Colleges were being run through faculty members working on a part-time basis, he regretted, and alleged that the required number of teachers was being cut to grant recognition to the maximum number of colleges.