KARACHI: The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) on Wednesday expressed ‘serious concerns’ over deterioration of education in the country’s medical colleges and teaching hospitals and said the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) which was supposed to register graduates, monitor and regularise medical education had ‘indulged in anti-patients and anti-doctors activities’.

Dr Mirza Ali Azhar, secretary general of PMA, said at a press conference at the PMA House that the PMDC recognised all kinds of medical and dental colleges without caring much for whether the colleges had teaching faculties, teaching hospitals or patients.

“The council has no control over colleges in public and private sectors where the college owners are charging huge amounts of fee and extracting donations from the parents of students. The PMDC has completely failed to curb quackery which is responsible for rising mortality and morbidity of thousands of patients all over the country,” he said.

He said the federal government was responsible for allowing the PMDC to go downhill over the years and degrade into an ‘inefficient and corrupt’ body.

Despite many court decisions, the government had not shown any interest in reforming the council by changing its composition and making it an independent, autonomous and powerful regulatory body, he said.

“It is time to act and regularise medical education and training in Pakistan for the sake of patients and the profession, not for the individual and vested interest group,” he said.

Dr Azhar said the PMA, the College of Family Medicine Pakistan (CFMP) and other professional associations were deeply concerned over several issues they faced, which included the registration.

Doctors all over the country were facing problems with the process of registration with the PMDC.

“There are many doctors who have sent their documents and been waiting for months and years to get registered but the PMDC, despite its huge staff, is delaying registration of fresh graduates, CPSP fellows and practicing doctors without any valid reasons,” he said.

For the past 70 years, he said, the PMA and the CFMP had been organising regular and continuous medical education (CME) sessions. But, instead of formulating a system of CME program and capacity building, the PMDC had suddenly started demanding CME certificates without any planning and facilitation.

“This is another method by which the PMDC is harassing doctors across the country. We strongly condemn this attitude and demand a system of the CME program all over the country before asking for CME certificate,” he added.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2015

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