Pakistan Medical Commission also regulates various medical and dental colleges across Pakistan.
By Naveed Hussain
ISLAMABAD: The powerful political elite have pushed the country’s top medical regulator to the brink of collapse by indiscriminately using it as a rubber stamp to serve their vested business interests, Independent Pakistan has learnt.
Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC), formerly Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), was formed through an ordinance in 1962, with some other regulatory bodies, for registration of medical and dental practitioners. The PMC also regulates various medical and dental colleges across Pakistan.
“For instance some of the big political houses started their own medical colleges and got them registered despite falling short on infrastructural, financial, and legal requirements, mandatory for meeting minimum criteria for recognition,” sources said.
Sources said in the years following its formation the PMDC gradually became a profitable autonomous medical regulatory authority.
It recognised over 170 medical and dental colleges across the country after tough scrutiny, sources said adding that this autonomous body was never a burden on any government ministry or department.
Plunging the stakeholders in dismay, the PTI-led government dissolved PMDC on October 20, 2019 through a presidential order. The move proved a disaster and the first casualty of disbanding the PMDC was its international recognition.
With its global acceptance gone, hundreds of doctors/physicians, practising abroad, were deported as their registration could not be verified from the newly formed PMC.
This massive setback, as per sources, was an upshot of a lack of expertise on part of PMC and its failure to coordinate with international medical and dental regulatory bodies across the world.
Different medical/dental bodies have been entreating with the government to revert PMC into PMDC in the greater interest of the country’s health sector, professionals, and medical students.
Last month, in a letter to the Prime Minister, Pakistan Medical Association appealed to the new government to reinstate the PMDC as a strong, democratic, autonomous, independent and transparent regulator to streamline medical education in the country.
“The PMC Bill 2020 was the outcome of disingenuous intentions of the previous government which was rejected by all the stakeholders. The central council of the PMA has unanimously rejected the PMC during its meetings,” the PMC said in the letter.
It further added that the PMC law was identical to the PMC Ordinance 2020, which was declared illegal by the Islamabad High Court in 2020.
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