PESHAWAR: Nowshera Medical College (NMC) will start admitting students from the next academic session as its affiliated teaching hospital will start operations in July.

The government has declared both, the under-construction 500bed district headquarters hospital and the old 125-bed district headquarters hospital as teaching hospitals for NMC. The staff for the college has been hired on ad hoc basis. The college would start inducting 100 students annually from next academic session in November-December.

Dr Mohammad Tahir, project director of the college, told Dawn that equipment for college andhospital would be procured within three months after which the new hospital would be opened for patients.

People from the catchment area of Nowshera district would have all the facilities of medicines, surgery, cardiology, gynecology, ear nose and throat (ENT), eye, orthopedic and super specialties like neurology and plastic surgery etc for which patients were currently taken to Peshawar-based tertiary care hospitals, he said.

Dr Tahir said that the college was being built temporarily at the new district headquarters hospital but it had got a separate plot of 30-kanal for a purpose-built building. A hostel is also being constructed on a six-kanal plot to house more than 500 students.

Construction of colleges would lead to promotion of clinical facilities, he said.

Dr Tahir said that NMC would establish liaison with the Royal College of Ireland soon after being accorded approval by Pakistan Medical and DentalCouncil. The college would be ready for PMDC`s inspection by October this year, he said. `We have completed all other requirements to be able to get recognition by PMDC,` he added.

Dr Tahir said that before PMDC, the representatives of Khyber Medical University would inspect the college.

He said that it was part of the provincial government`s plan to establish a medical college in every district of the province and put in place academic facilities for the students as well as strengthening healthcare in the respective district.

More than Rs2 billion had been allocated by the government to complete both the projects -the new district headquarters hospital and NMC.

The new district headquarters hospital had been approved by Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the late emir of Jamaat-i-Islami, in 2005 but it couldn`t be completed in its stipulated period of three years because of disputes and non-avail-ability of funds, ofñcial sources said.

The construction of NMC has proved a blessing for the people of the district, who will now see it made functional af ter two months.

Dr Tahir said that new medical colleges were needed to provide service of doctors to all people of the province.

The construction of Nowshera Medical College has attracted criticism from political parties, who allege that the government shifted Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical College from Peshawar to Nowshera, the home district of Chief Minister Pervez Khattak.

ZABMC was announced by late prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 1988 but it couldn`t be built owing to lack of interest by the successive governments.

Dr Tahir said that that ZABMC had nothing to do with NMC. The former will be built in Peshawar for which land has already been allocated. `Nowshera Medical College is totally a different project,` he said.