College ordered to address issues

LAHORE

Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) has warned a medical college in Lahore to rectify its deficiencies within one month or strict action will be taken against it.

According to a press release issued here, PM&DC President Prof Dr Shabbir Lahri on Friday paid a surprise visit to the college in Lahore to examine facilities being provided to the students at a par with PM&DC standards.

The college is presently recognized for training of 150 MBBS students. During the visit, the spokesman said, it was  observed that the college was deficient in many aspects specially the bed occupancy ratio in the wards of the teaching hospital was very low, which has been a massive deficiency as the medical students have to learn skills but less than 10 per cent beds were occupied by the patients.

The spokesman said that a total of 18 ventilators were lying vacant whereas more than multiple patients in the public hospitals keep on waiting for it and fail to find a single ventilator. On the other hand, the college administration keeps the ICU vacant and hasn’t admitted patients in need of ventilators.

The spokesman said that, out of 40 emergency beds, only 4 beds were occupied. Necessary furniture, benches and other stuff was being managed during the visit as the wards were giving an empty look. For instance, he says, in a 500-bed tertiary care hospital, on average only 2 to 4 patients were being admitted in medical or surgical wards daily, which were too low to train 350 students rotating in clinical wards of 3rd year, 4th year and final year MBBS. “The cleanliness standard of washrooms was extremely shabby,” he added.