ISLAMABAD: The Federal Medical and Dental College (FMDC), the first ever public sector medical college in the federal capital, has been placed in A category by the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) after it removed all the deficiencies.

In April, the PMDC had stopped the FMDC from offering admissions as it lacked certain facilities, especially faculty members and a teaching hospital.

To resolve the issue, the Ministry of National Health Services made the college a constituent body of the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Medical University (Pims).

On July 8, President Mamnoon Hussain called a meeting of all stakeholders which decided that the PMDC would allow the students to get admission if the college removed deficiencies within one month.

After obtaining an undertaking from the college, the medical council allowed it (college) to offer admissions and classes began on July 24.

Vice Chancellor Pims Dr Javed Akram, who is also member of the PMDC council, while talking to Dawn, said the council’s executive committee took up the FMDC case and found that it had appointed the neccessary faculty members under the tenure track policy.

Under this policy of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), the faculty is required to have a PhD in the relevant field with six years experience and 10 research publications (with at least four publications in the past five years) in international journals.

Dr Javed said because of efforts by all the stakeholders, PMDC has finally included FMDC in the A category list of the medical colleges.

He said the college had finally had its digital library which offered 19,000 books and 7,000 journals. The library will be inaugurated on August 19.

A faculty member of the FMDC, requesting not to be identified, said the college faced so many issues because there were some elements who did not want to see a public sector medical college in the federal capital.

“As public sector colleges charge a nominal fee compared to private sector medical institutions, it will definitely affect their (private institutions) business,” he said.

“Putting the college in the list of A Category shows that now it (FMDC) has all the facilities including a hospital, nursing college, CT scan, MRI and faculty members,” he said.

According to the list available on the PMDC website, Army Medical College, Rawalpindi, Fatima Jinnah Medical College for Women Lahore, Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nayhan Medical and Dental College Lahore and others are in the list of A Category and King Edward Medical University, Lahore, Rawalpindi Medical College, Nawaz Sharif Medical College, Gujrat, Islamic International Medical College, Islamabad and others are in B Category.

It is pertinent to mention that categories are given on the basis of the facilities. If a college has a 300-bed teaching hospital, a nursing college, a CT scan machine, a MRI machine and departments of all faculties it is ranked in A Category.

Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2015

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