LAHORE: The Punjab health authorities’ efforts to establish a first-ever high-powered board parallel to the federal medical education regulatory bodies suffered a blow when two departments declared the proposal “unfeasible and unwarranted” .

The specialized healthcare and medical education department had done an extensive work to propose and draft the autonomous body - Punjab Health Education Board, an official privy to the development told Dawn.

He said the sole purpose of the move was to improve the education standards for optimum utilization in healthcare delivery by managing teaching programmes and affairs of a large number of healthcare work force across the province.

It had sent a summary to the law and planning & development departments to seek their consent about the scheme and the draft act before forwarding the same to the chief minister for approval.

The official said the law secretary and P&D chairman, in their comments, declared the proposed constitution of PHED “in contradiction to the rules & regulations of the federal education regulatory authorities”.

The regulatory authorities included the Pakistan Medical & Dental Council (PM&DC) and the Higher Education Commission (HEC).

They were of the view that the constitution of the board would open a Pandora’s box of legal and administrative issues if formed in letter and spirit as the two federal institutions were already performing the same work, as was proposed for the board.

In the summary, the health department had given in detail the justification to constitute the board stating that it would coordinate with other regulatory bodies for implementation of standards to strengthen the education system.

It had enlisted the prime objectives of the proposed board that included standardization of health education programme, merit-based admissions in health science education programes including post-graduate training programmes, quality assurance of the programmes/teaching institutions/hospitals, selection of best teachers and continuous professional development of faculty, policy development, advisory role, ranking of teaching institutions, coordination with regulatory bodies & degree awarding institutions and uplifting of education of nurses and paramedical technical healthcare workforce.

Giving a reason in the summary, the department stated that due to significant increase in the number of teaching facilities and rapid increase in the number of programmes/courses, technical requirements of education of healthcare workforce had also increased.

“Therefore, there is a need to connect the expectations, requirements, standards and emerging needs of the regulatory bodies and the public on one side and the teaching institutions/teaching hospitals in Punjab on the other side”, says the draft of the summary.

Consequently, the establishment of Punjab Health Education Board has been orchestrated, it says adding that the draft act for vetting by the law & parliamentary affairs department has been attached.

The initial financial implication for the establishment of the PHEB for first financial year shall be met through already allocated allocation of Rs600 million during current financial year 2017-18, it said.

“The Punjab Health Education Board Act 2017 may be approved and passed by the provincial assembly or it may be promulgated through an ordinance”, the health department had proposed in the summary.

It further requested that the board may be allowed to be established as an autonomous body of the health department, demanding approval for the provision of one-line budget amounting to Rs60 million for remaining period of 2017-18 to the PHEB from the already allocated sum mentioned above on the pattern of the Punjab Human Organ Transplant Authority.

The official said that after having a detailed review of entire draft, the law and P&D officials were of the view that the HEC, as a statuary body, was already dealing with the issues of regulating the higher education by standardizing the programmes, curriculum, quality, and degree awarding institutions.

Similarly, several other professional councils including the PMDC and Pakistan Nursing Council and Pharmacy Council of Pakistan were already doing the same work under laid-down rules and regulations.

He said they suggested the health authorities to initiate a proposal of constitution of a “directorate with different objectives” or dump the in-question plan.

The official said that the health authorities had decided to discuss the matter in coming meetings.

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2017