HYDERABAD, Feb 21: The first anniversary of Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS) was celebrated at the campus in Jamshoro on Wednesday evening with a lot fanfare.

The Sindh minister for health and population welfare, Ehsan Ahmed, who was the chief guest, inaugurated the new building of the faculty of community and public health sciences as well as the departments of forensic medicine and gynaecology and maternity unit.

He said that it was a pleasure to see the Liaquat medical college rise to the level of the first public sector medical university in the country. He, however, hastened to add that this honour also brought in its wake great challenges for the administration and the faculty members of the university.

He expressed the hope that the university would spare no efforts in meeting these new challenges and coming up to the expectations of the province and the country.

The areas he asked the university to improve immediately were the standard of setting up examination papers, conduct of examinations, checking and marking of papers, and security of the department of examinations.

He said that we could not afford strikes and boycott in the medical institutions of Sindh.

He said that students should not suffer from non-availability of teachers because of their private practice and reminded the doctors that private practice had already been banned in Punjab and NWFP.

“If we do not put our house in order immediately, we will have to blame no one but ourselves for the storm which I can clearly see appearing on the horizon”, he warned.