Lacking accreditation: Medical university in Larkana yet to qualify CPSP standards

A CPSP team visited Chandka hospital and made recommendations.

RATODERO: The Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Medical University, Larkana, has yet to qualify the standards set by the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP).

Since the university does not have enough teachers and equipment in Chandka Medical College and Hospital, the CPSP withheld its accreditation. A CPSP team inspected the hospital’s departments in December 2011 and notified the shortcomings in anaesthesiology, dermatology, forensic medicine, neurosurgery, orthopaedic surgery, psychiatry, ENT and pulmonary departments.

The CPSP registrar wrote to the university’s vice chancellor and requested him to improve in these areas. The university’s postgraduate studies director circulated the letter among all these departments and informed them that the accreditation has been deferred until the shortcomings are fulfilled.

Following this, the anaesthesiology department in-charge Dr Ahmeduddin Soomro, who joined in August 2012, requested the medical superintendent of Chandka hospital to provide at least five doctors to run the operation theatres according to the recommendations of the CPSP.

The team pointed out that the hospital does not have enough teachers for the seven surgical blocks and 29 operation theatres. They claimed that if one department lacks essential items, then the rest of the hospital is in equally bad shape.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12^th, 2013.