June 23, 2008	Monday	Jamadi-us-Sani 18, 1429

LAHORE, June 22: After striking down self-finance scheme in state-managed medical education, the Punjab government is all set to check mushrooming private institutions and ‘regulate’ their affairs.

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has constituted a nine-member committee, comprising provincial health secretary Anwaar Ahmed Khan (head), the law secretary, University of Health Sciences Vice-Chancellor Prof Hussain Mubbashar Malik, Fatima Jinnah Medical College\Sir Ganga Ram Hospital head Prof Majid Chaudhry, MPAs – Dr Saeed Elahi, Dr Asad Ashraf, Dr Arshad Chohan and Muhammad Akhtar Malik – and advocate Ashtar Osaaf for the purpose.

The committee has primarily been mandated to recommend steps to check proliferating private medical institutions in the province and regulate their affairs in addition to give proposals regarding the criterion of the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC). The committee members are holding first meeting here on Monday (today).

According to a source in the health department, the chief minister had to form the special committee after reports that the government lacked an elaborate system of checks and balances to regulate the establishment of private medical colleges and anyone having enough money and resources could do the venture without fulfilling the set criterion which was not only resulting in lowering of medical education standard in the country but also discouraging the merit.

He said the committee would take into account the admission policy, fee structure, infrastructure and faculty of the existing private medical colleges and those who had applied for PMDC recognition.

The private medical and dental institutions in Punjab would start admission process before the public sector institutions initiated the procedure in a bid to ‘generate maximum revenue.’ This is in violation of the law which bars private institution from doing so until the process is completed in the public sector institutions so that the students who fail to get admission there turn to them. By doing so, the private institutions would make extra bucks by fleecing the students who get admission in public colleges.

Only last year, the provincial government made it binding for the private medical and dental institutions to return fees to those candidates who would get admission to the public sector institutions after clearing the entrance test.

The source said the committee would look into such anomalies and propose ways and means to deal with the situation.

He further said that one member of the committee had shares in a private medical college that might lead to ‘conflict of interests’ while finalizing the recommendations.

At present, eight private medical colleges have PMDC recognition. They are; Lahore Medical Dental College (Lahore), Fatima Memorial Hospital College of Dentistry (Lahore), College of Medicine and Dentisry (Lahore), Margalla Institute of Health Sciences, CMH Lahore Medical College, Faisalabad Medical College (Faisalabad) and Independent Medical College (Faisalabad) and Wah Medical College (Wah Cantonment).

These institutions are affiliated with the UHS. Under its ordinance (section 37) all medical institutions functioning within the geographical boundaries of Punjab affiliate with the UHS.