PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to establish five medical colleges under the public-private partnership programme in the province.

“The colleges would be established in Buner, Charsadda, Mansehra, Haripur and Karak as part of government’s plan to promote medical education in the province,” Health Secretary Amir Sultan Tareen told Dawn.

According to him, he has already visited three districts and would go to Karak this week on special directives of Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, who wants to him to submit a feasibility report within a month.

“We are working very quickly on the plan in collaboration with Khyber Medical University (KMU) as the government wants to establish these colleges as soon as possible. The project has been included in the Annual Development Programme,” he said.

Official says work to be initiated on project within two months

Mr Tareen said that KMU Vice-chancellor Prof Ziaul Haq in collaboration with the health department was working on the preparation of feasibility report. “We hope to start practical work on the project within next two months,” he added.

He said that health department was receiving demands for setting up medical colleges from the elected representatives of each and every district. He said that public sector medical colleges were facilitating most of the intelligent students and even students from the poor families could take admission there owing to lesser fee.

The fees in the private sector were very high and only public sector intuitions are ray of hope for the scions of downtrodden families to become medical doctors. “KMU has vast experience in medical education,” he said.

Mr Tareen said that chief minister had instructed them to complete the plan as early as possible. “There will be no delay as we are not going to hire consultants for feasibility but KMU is utilising its expertise and we would be able to advertise the establishment of the proposed colleges through public private partnership soon,” he added.

He said that they were also looking for the availability of 500-bed hospitals as per requirement of Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) for recognition of the colleges. He said in some districts, there were buildings that could house the colleges while in others plots were identified for construction of buildings.

KMU Vice-chancellor Prof Ziaul Haq said that on the instructions of chief ministers, the new medical colleges would be established in five districts to facilitate native population and improve patients’ care.

“There are 10 medical and five dental colleges in public sector and seven medical and three dental colleges in private sector in the province affiliated with KMU. The province has medical and as many dental colleges, which are not affiliated with us,” he said.

He said that he along with members of provincial assembly Ahmad Hussain Shan and Babar Saleem visited Mansehra on Tuesday and identified sites for Mansehra Medical College.

“Our team inspected Fatima Jinnah Public School for Girls and Elementary Teachers Training College and made a detailed review of various facilities available there. Various departments of King Abdullah Hospital were also inspected and found satisfactory to act as affiliated teaching hospital,” he said.

Prof Zia said that every medical college required a teaching hospital. “Therefore, we are seeing the available health facilities in the respective districts as well as buildings to house the colleges,” he added.

Officials at Health Foundation told Dawn that after completion of the feasibility, they would advertise to seek expression of interest from the private parties for setting up colleges and hospitals. The private parties work under the government to improve services.

They said that they had already contracted out 19 hospitals, which had shown better performance and plans were afoot to outsource 58 more health facilities within a month.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2022