ISLAMABAD, Jan 10: The Federal Minister for Health Muhammad Nasir Khan pledged to further improve medical education system and the teaching programmes to produce doctors of quality and excellence.

He was presiding over a meeting of the steering committee for community-oriented medical education here on Monday. In his concluding remarks, the minister emphasized the uniformity in medical education so as to produce doctors of quality and excellence.

There should be sensible planning by the universities for a budget needed to bring about this change, he added. Internal evaluation of students is a very important component of teaching and should be incorporated in the programme, he said.

Parents and students should be taken into confidence, as they are also stakeholders in medical education, the minister said. He gave assurance that ministry of health and the provincial departments would have an ownership of this programme to carry it forward.

Partnership between public and private sectors is necessary to produce linkages between health education and the delivery of health services at the gross roots, he said. He suggested that a task force should be made immediately to make a practical work plan for implementation of this decision.

The health secretary maintained that the budget and resources could be made available if the colleges and universities had the will to implement this form of teaching in the institutions. -APP