Power clique uses PMDC to gain monopoly over medical education

KU has been granting medical degrees since 1951, has now been told to secede from its affiliated colleges

KARACHI:

Succumbing to the demands of a power clique that took over the country's prime regulatory body of medical education - the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) - last year, the Karachi University's (KU) vice-chancellor Dr Muhammad Qaiser has announced admissions to the university's 'medical college' that has yet to see the light of day.

The vice-chancellor made the announcement in reaction to the PMDC's tactics of pressing the university to secede from its 13 affiliated medical and dental colleges since it does not have a constituent medical or dental college of its own.

Ironic as it may seem, the PMDC's controversial caretakers are conspiring against the university that has been awarding medicine degrees since its inception in 1951 and thousands of healthcare professionals in the country feel privileged of having their names attached to the institution.

Incidentally, Prof Dr Masood Hameed Khan, who as a result of an unlawful election, was elected unopposed as the PMDC president, has a legal proviso in the PMDC (Amendment) Act, 2012, to cite in justification of the controversial move.  It is, however, no coincidence that Dr Khan got the hang of this proviso around two years after the passage of the amendment when his cronies are toiling to establish the Sindh PMDC to have absolute control over the medical education and healthcare profession in Sindh.

On the pretext of 'provincial autonomy', the provincial government's plans, orchestrated by a private sector group, are afoot in this direction. It is only fitting then that Prof Dr Syed Tipu Sultan, elected councillor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan, equates the PMDC's devolution to introducing the province to a new level of deterioration in medical education and profession.

The amendment in the PMDC Ordinance of 1962 has changed the very definition of the Pakistani universities that are now to be recognised by the PMDC, and thus eligible to grant affiliation to the medical and dental colleges. The universities having a medical or dental faculty, including the Karachi University, that were earlier recognised under the actual PMDC Ordinance for granting medical qualifications will now have to have a "constituent medical or dental college".

In contrast, the Act of the Parliament through which the KU was established, affirms its prerogative to grant affiliation to medical and dental colleges since a faculty of medicine as well as a board of studies have been a constituent part of the university under the same Act. Here, the two laws are in conflict with each other and only adjudication by the superior judiciary can help remove the anomaly.

In relation to these developments, the KU administration has miserably failed on two counts. It did not challenge the contentious amendment when it was tabled in the National Assembly at the behest of some groups with vested interests in the PMDC. Secondly, the university, if it inevitably had to, did not take timely measures to establish a 'constituent medical college' of its own.

But educationists and healthcare professionals do realise the ridiculousness of the demand that prestigious public-sector universities that do have functional medicine faculties should also own a medical college in order to affiliate other medical colleges. They criticise the groups with vested interests in the PMDC of having mala fide intentions to create a monopoly on medical education and the healthcare profession. This appears true as the 13 medical and dental colleges, affiliated with the Karachi University, have been directed by the PMDC's current custodians to affiliate with a university that has its own hospital and medical college. Admittedly, the move will also transfer the millions of rupees of annual revenue from the cash-strapped KU to the intended institutions.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2014.