NATIONAL dailies reported that the Prime Minister inaugurated the academic activities of 11 new public medical colleges, aiming to fulfil the country’s huge demand for physicians to provide better medical services to its people. Reports clarified that of the 11 public medical colleges, six are government medical colleges located in Sirajganj, Tangail, Manikganj, Jamalpur, Patuakhali and Rangamati while the rest five are army medical colleges located in Rangpur, Jessore, Chittagong, Comilla and Bogra. Mentionable, in 4 of these district towns there are public medical colleges. The country has more than 75 medical colleges, of them 49 are private ones.
According to reports the PM hoped that the new medical colleges would play an effective role in creating efficient doctors as the country has huge demand for physicians and clarified that these colleges would help reduce pressure on the doctors in the future when new physicians will come out successfully from there. According to reports the government apparently regretted that Bangladesh’s health sector remained neglected for a long time though the country needed more medical colleges and universities to create physicians for the country’s huge population. The PM also talked to leaders, public representatives and army officials of the respective districts and regions through the video conferencing, and assured them of fulfilling their various demands of respective regions.
Even on the face of it, establishing public medical colleges seems like an appreciable endeavour, but in reality the issue is fraught with irregularities and potential for disaster. Considering the number of public medical colleges already in existence, it is important to look into the burning questions — how many competent doctors are actually coming out of these colleges ? What guarantee is there that the newly established ones will produce competent ones? It is difficult to assume that the new institutes will have proper faculty, resources and facilities comparing them with some inefficient public medical colleges already in existence. Thousands of doctors graduate every year, but it is very difficult to calculate how many will actually be effective. Even the PM expressed her doubt about the quality of medical graduates produced currently in the country.
This move seems like another ill-thought out movement by the government wasting tax-payer funds. What the government should focus on is employing competent teachers and allocating necessary resources to already established medical colleges so that we get a few quality doctors instead of just many bad ones.
