New Medical colleges for boys in Sindh

KARACHI - The Sindh Government will set up boys medical colleges as the province is facing an extreme shortage of male doctors. “The government is paying utmost attention to the health and educational sectors,” Sindh Law and Environment Minister - Dr Sikandar Mandhro said while addressing the inaugural ceremony of the Institute of Pharmacy and Diagnostic Centre at the Jinnah Sindh Medical University (JSMU) in Karachi.

Dr Mandhro directed the JSMU administration to launch telemedicine and e-medicine projects so that people in rural Sindh could also benefit from their doctors’ expertise. The minister announced that the government would soon provide 15 acres to the JSMU for setting up a medical education city.

Through a notification, he added, the provincial government had declared the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) as the teaching hospital for the JSMU.  JSMU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Tariq Rafi said; Since becoming a university, JSMU had established 24 medical institutes. “From next year on, admissions would open for an all boys medical college and a dental college for boys too.”

Rafi said land had been bought in Korangi where the construction of a boys medical college would start soon. The Sindh Government Hospital Korangi will be the college’s teaching hospital. “The number of female medical students is on the rise at public and private medical colleges,” he said. “This year too, the ratio of female students at the Sindh Medical College is 83 percent, while that of male students is merely 17 percent.”

Citing Pakistan Medical and Dental Council statistics, he said there were only 172,000 doctors registered in the country which was very alarming as there was only one doctor available to serve 20,000 people in the country.

Rafi pointed out that the majority of senior doctors and consultants had retired from the JPMC and fresh appointments were not taking place because of legal obligations. “This is causing problems for the patients who visit the JPMC,” he added.