Islamabad - The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PM&DC) has extended the moratorium on establishment of new medical and dental colleges in order to enhance and maintain the standards of the medical dental colleges.
The PM&DC has taken this decision keeping in mind the gross deficiency of teaching faculty in medical dental institutions in 128 colleges already functioning in the country. As per record of PM&DC, there are only 10846 teaching faculty members available and 4343 faculty members are deficient in the existing institutions.
This step has been taken to improve the standards of medical education in accordance with the latest decisions made by the executive committee of the council in its meeting, apprised President PM&DC Prof Dr Masood Hameed.
He said PM&DC has renewed the registration of 101,802 medical practitioners and 9,614 dental practitioners till to date. More than 9,000 letters have been written to doctors having invalid registrations for validation of their registration certificates.
He said PM&DC as per its amendment act of 2012 has started formation of specialists medical boards at local /regional level so that medical dental education in the country is promoted more effectively and it will help eradicate quackery. These boards shall specify the specialist to remain within their allowed limit to practice their specialty as per their qualification. To perform any advance procedure these specialists shall have to qualify accordingly.
He emphasised that the council has ensured the standards of medical dental colleges and till 2012 only four new medical dental colleges have been recognised till now and has done approximately 100 comprehensive and surprise inspections of undergraduate/ postgraduate institutions 2013 to 2014 in order to upgrade the standards of the colleges with the result closure has been recommended to the Ministry of Health Islamabad for 5 medical colleges.
PM&DC has also barred 14 medical dental colleges for new admissions who do not have their own 150 bedded functional hospitals which increased 2100 number of beds in the country and further instructed the medical institution to offer 50% welfare beds for patients and 5% students quota for free medical education.
He added that PM&DC has been recognised for its accreditation standards as comparable to USA standards by NCFMEA, USA, and has developed an international level interactive PM&DC website which has the capacity to support information sharing with other regulatory authorities of the world. However, PMDC has cancelled 74 illegal registrations of MRCS qualification holders as it is an entry level qualification but it was being registered as qualification equal to level III i.e. FCPS etc.
He added that PM&DC has developed guidelines for medical journals and has started the index of Pakistan’s recognised journals through an exclusive section started for this purpose.