CM announces upgrading KMC, AMC to medical universities

PESHAWAR: Caretaker Chief Minister Justice (retired) Syed Arshad Hussain Shah on Sunday announced the upgrading of Khyber Medical College (KMC) Peshawar and Ayub Medical College (AMC) Abbottabad to the status of medical universities.

It was a long-awaited demand as well as desire of the KMC faculty and graduates that was finally met. The Ayub Medical College was established 25 years after the establishment of the KMC. 

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was the only province that has a single medical university, Khyber Medical University (KMU) in the public sector.

Being a premier medical college of the province established in 1954, KMC is the largest, and mother medical institution, striving for excellence in medical education since 1954.

KMC, being the first medical college in KP and the third in the country after King Edwards Medical College in Lahore and Dow Medical College in Karachi, has produced more than 15,000 medical professionals.

Before 2006, the KMC was affiliated with the University of Peshawar, but after the establishment of KMU, KMC was affiliated with it as an affiliate body for licensure exclusively.

KMC has one of the largest and highly qualified faculty, state-of-the-art teaching/ learning facilities, updated laboratories, and a 1600-bed purpose-built tertiary care Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH).

It was a desire of the faculty of the college to be given the status of a university but no one had taken it seriously in the past. Everybody thought that since the province has a medical university, it would be difficult for them to get a university status.

The college present Dean Prof Dr Mahmud Aurangzeb and his team discussed it in their internal meeting and then sought assistance of former graduates of the college. The college has produced hundreds of graduates.

Besides many other prominent graduates, the present caretaker federal and state health ministers, Dr Nadeem Jan and Dr Aamir Bilal, respectively, advisor to KP caretaker chief minister on health, Dr Riaz Anwar, and a noted US-based cardiologist and president of Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America (APPNA), Dr Arshad Rehan, are all graduates of KMC.

The college has always been the first choice of the students who want to pursue their medical education as it has the top merit, enrolling the largest number of students in the province.

Some of its graduates have rightly stated that KMC enjoys the same status in medical education as the historic Islamia College Peshawar was enjoying in general education.

Two decades ago, the federal government had decided to establish medical universities in three provinces i.e. Sindh, Punjab, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by upgrading Dow Medical College Karachi, King Edward Medical College Lahore, and Khyber Medical College Peshawar to universities.

As a result, Dow Medical College Karachi was upgraded to Dow University of Health Sciences and King Edward Medical College to King Edward Medical University. The upgradation of KMC to the university status had already been announced by the then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, during the convocation in 1989.

But later on, a common university was chartered under the name of Khyber Medical University (the name originally chosen for the up-gradation of KMC to a university) in which KMC, Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad, PGMI, and KCD were made constituent colleges of KMU through Act of provincial assembly in 2006.

But soon after the establishment of KMU as a common university for all the medical colleges of the province, it encountered difficulties in managing the medical colleges of the province in one way or another.

Consequently, all medical colleges of the province were de-constituted from KMU, and their constituent status was changed to affiliated status with KMU, where KMU was made only the examining body for the existing medical/dental colleges of the province through an act of the provincial assembly in July 2008.

Therefore, after July 2008, KMC was affiliated with KMU for examinations and licensure. Although KMC fulfilled all the institutional requirements of a medical university, but it’s up-gradation to a university was always ignored.

As a result, the vast academic potential of KMC was not optimally utilised due to a lack of the required academic and administrative independence that is necessary for an academic institution to flourish.

Interestingly, the opposition against up-gradation of KMC to a university started in the very beginning when the idea was floated during the visit of caretaker federal health minister Dr Nadeem Jan to the college last month.

The opposition came from old graduates of the college. Their argument was that since KP already had a medical university, there was no need for another medical university.

King Edward Medical College has been upgraded to King Edward Medical University Lahore while the University of Health Sciences Lahore was there as an examining body for other affiliated medical colleges of the Punjab province.

Dow Medical College has been upgraded to Dow Medical University of Health Sciences while there were many medical universities in Karachi. Islamia College has been upgraded to Islamia College University while the University of Peshawar was offering the same courses.

The population of KP has doubled since 2006. The number of medical colleges in 2006 was seven in the public sector and two in the private sector), while this number has increased to 24 (18 medical colleges and 6 dental colleges) in the last 17 years.

There was a dire need to create more medical universities to cater to the workload due to the mushrooming of medical institutions in the province.“We think that Khyber Medical College is already equipped, prepared, and naturally positioned for the role to become a university, and in fact, it has been performing this role in medical education in the province. KMC has all the justifications to have been upgraded to the status of a medical university like its equivalent medical colleges in Sindh (Dow Medical College), Punjab (King Edward Medical College), and other KP universities,” said a senior faculty member of KMC.

Since there is already a medical university with this name, KMU, the college administration will need to suggest a suitable name so the institution doesn’t lose its identity. Before the start of this century, KP had only two public sector medical colleges and one dental college for MBBS and BDS respectively.

But in the last 23 years, the number has risen to 27 medical schools (19 medical colleges and 8 dental colleges). Among these 27 medical and dental colleges, 23 are affiliated with the Khyber Medical University, which is the single public sector medical university for MBBS, BDS, nursing, paramedics, allied health, and social health sciences in the province.

The university was created in 2006 at a time when the population of this province was 17.8 million and the number of medical and dental colleges was only 6. After 23 years, the population has doubled (40.8 million).

The number of medical teaching institutions has risen fourfold, and many general and technical education colleges have been converted into universities, not a single public sector medical university has been created to cater to the needs of the population in KP.

KMC is fully equipped with all the relevant requirements in terms of academic requirements, human resources, infrastructure, facilities, and biomedical equipment. The institute, as part of the MTI (Medical Teaching Institute) consists of Khyber Medical College (KMC), Khyber College of Dentistry (KCD), Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH), and College of Nursing, KTH.