ISLAMABAD: Not a single medical college in the country meets the criterion of the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), said the council’s vice president, Prof Dr Abid Farooqi on Tuesday.

During a briefing to members of the Senate Standing Committee on National Health Services (NHS), he said there were more medical colleges in the country than required.

“We have 140 medical colleges at present, and the applications of another 15 are being reviewed,” he said, “Almost 100 years ago, there were 150 medical colleges in the US due to which quality issues had arisen. It was then decided to reduce the number of colleges to 35 and even now with a population of 350 million, there are 140 medical colleges in the US,” he said, Chaired by Senator Sajjad Hussein Turi, the meeting was held in Parliament House’s committee room.

There are more medical colleges than required, which affects quality of education, says PMDC vice president

Talking about private medical colleges, Prof Farooqi said that the PMDC had fixed an annual fee of Rs642,000 per student and that colleges ask students for more money for other amenities including hostel fee, which means students end up paying between Rs800,000 to Rs1.8 million a year.

“Each year, some 70,000 students apply to get into medical colleges and of these, 14,000 are granted admission. Many of the others try to bribe their way in, and colleges are also always ready to accept these bribes and hence, complaints are never lodged with the council,” he added.

The PMDC vice president said that medical colleges also misuse the 15pc quota for overseas Pakistanis, on which they admit locals and charge them $18,000 per year.

It has now been decided to introduce a centralised admissions system under which one merit list will be made for all the medical colleges of a province and the federal capital, which will address many problems, he added.

Prof Farooqi said that the council becomes more lenient in cases of public sector and army colleges and is stricter with private medical colleges. Even then, if it tries to take action against them, private colleges get out of facing consequences my using students as leverage, he added.

“We accept undertaking given by government run medical colleges in which they say they will meet the shortcomings but similar undertakings from private medical colleges are usually rejected. We sealed a private college in Abbotabad, but accommodating the students in other colleges became a huge problem,” the PMDC vice president said.

NHS Secretary Ayub Sheikh said steps were being taken to ensure good quality education is offered at medical colleges by removing owners of medical colleges from the admissions process.

Senator Kalsoom Parveen said that medical colleges do not have proper facilities and that they try to mint money from students.

“The quality of education is not up to the mark which is why we are not producing good doctors. We need to take strict action and address these problems. Those colleges which do not meet the requirements should be closed down,” she said.

The use of Sheesha

During the same meeting, Senator Ateeq Shiekh said that five star hotels in the city, and a restaurant in F-6 offer sheesha and that no action is being taken against them.

In its reply, the NHS ministry said it was only responsible for regulation and that the Ministry of Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) was responsible for putting a stop to the use of sheesha.

The committee decided to call CADD representatives to inquire about the action being taken against the use of sheesha.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2016