10pc private medical colleges are fake, says PMDC chief

Around 10 percent of private medical colleges in Pakistan are “fake” and merely “money-making ventures” being run by owners of ghee, textile and sugar mill owners, Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) president Dr Shabir Ahmed Lehri said on Friday.

Speaking at the inaugural session of a three-day international conference, Dr Lehri said these fake colleges were providing substandard medical education.

“Ninety percent of private medical colleges are imparting quality education, but other 10 percent are only fleecing the public,” he added.

The three-day conference on “Bridging the gap in primary healthcare innovations, translations beyond” is organised by the Ziauddin University and local as well as foreign health experts are attending the event.

Dr Lehri said that stern action was being taken against those who were destroying medical education in Pakistan.

 “The PMDC is there to facilitate anyone who is going to operate on merit; we are there to resolve problems, issues and to facilitate the health fraternity. We are working against corruption and maladministration.”

Dr Lehri said when he took over as the PMDC president, there were 20,000 applications pending for registration and he and his team worked day and night to address them all.

He said there were three types of medical curricula in the country being taught at medical educational institutions in the country.

He added that the PMDC’s curriculum committee was working day and night to chalk out a single curriculum for all medical educational institutions in the coming days.

He praised the Ziauddin University for being a national institution serving the country with dedication and international standards and appreciated its efforts for arranging such an informative event.

Commenting on bridging the gap in primary healthcare innovations, Dr Lehri said the medical field was evolving with each passing day.

Dr Maud Nauta from the Camden Health Improvement Practice, London, UK, speaking on the topic “How and why we make mistakes: Lessons learnt from the West” informed the audience about human factors in primary healthcare.

Giving examples of human factors including workload, lack of knowledge, pattern recognition, and overconfidence, she said 100,000 people died in hospitals alone because of human error.

She pointed out that first we needed to find out our errors and then we could solve them.

Dr Nauta maintained that all healthcare professionals strived for improvement in patient care but at least 10 percent of patients admitted to hospitals would encounter a potentially fatal medical error and 50 percent of these were preventable. Human factors or non-technical skills contribute to at least 70 percent of these errors.

Prof Dr Ghaffar Billo, senior professor of paediatrics at the Aga Khan University Hospital and the founder of HANDS, spoke on the subject of “Harnessing the energy of healthcare workforce to benefit the community”.

He elaborated the functions of his NGO and talked about community empowerment.

Earlier, Pirzada Qasim Raza Siddiqui, the vice chancellor of the Ziauddin University, in his welcome address said the Ziauddin University was striving for the promotion of health and social sciences in the country and it had acquired the services of the best available academicians, professors and researchers from Pakistan and abroad.

The conference will continue for two more days at the Ziauddin University in Clifton where various aspects of primary healthcare, preventive measures, innovative medicine and technology and other issues in the field of medical education will be discussed.