T HIS is apropos a news item `PMDC board proposals heavily tilted in f avour of private colleges` (Sept 20). I wish to point out some anomalies in the criticism of the PMDC`s current approach.
Some time back, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council had started drawing up a reforms package ostensibly to rid private medical education of the ills that were plaguing the quality of education besides negatively affecting students and their parents.
I had argued then that PMDC, instead of getting too intrusively involved in the admission criteria and methodology, should focus on weightier issues, like the curricula standards,infrastructural adequacy and the quality of the faculty necessary to train doctors and dentists of international standards.
The PMDC wasted a lot of time in idle contest with private medical colleges over admission criteria, an aspect that was not within their remit. It needs to be understood by the health ministry mandarins as well as the PMDC management that private medical education comes at a cost and that if the government cannot raise enough medical colleges, the vacuum is filled up by the private sector.
What the PMDC initially focused on was wrong .With the fresh proposals, some sense seems to be percolating through the right focus on the quality of medical infrastructure, faculty and the curriculum, leaving the admission procedures and tests to the colleges.
It is also a correct decision to get a monetary commitment from parents before the programme because if students f ail to continue with the MBBS degree for financial reasons midway, the colleges` administration simply cannot run these programmes. The current proposals therefore are pragmatic. The only issue that needs to be watched with concern is the escalationin thefee structure ensuring that it is not beyond af fordable limits.
