The Ministry of Health and Family Planning has decided to introduce a new but separate Medical Education Cadre Service to cope with the acute shortage of teachers for the government medical colleges in the country. The decision was taken on Monday at a meeting with Serajul Islam, Secretary of Health Education Division of the ministry, in the chair. The meeting pleaded for radical change in the organ-ogram to cope with the shortage of medical faculties of 30 state-run medical colleges in the country.
At present each and every department of the medical colleges, both undergraduate and post graduate, has one professor, one associate professor, two assistant professors and eight lecturers for the basic nine subjects. These subjects are: Anatomy, Biochemistry, Forensic Medicine, Microbiology, Physiology, Pharmacology, Pathology, Anestheology and Community Medicine.
Among the 30 state-run medical colleges, eight are offering post-graduate teachings. The eight post graduate medical colleges are: Dhaka Medical College, Sir Salimullah Medical College, Chittagong Medi-cal College, Mymensingh Medical College, Rajshahi Medical College, Sylhet Medical College, Rangpur Medical College and Barisal Shere-e-Bangla Medical College.
Both the undergraduate and the postgraduate medical colleges are facing acute medical faculties for a long time. To meet the teacher shortage problem, the ministry has decided to restructure the teaching patterns and manned the departments of post graduate colleges with two professors, three associate professors, five assistant professors and 15 lecturers. The undergraduate medical colleges will get, in addition to their existing faculty members, one professor, two associate professors, three assistant professors and 10 lecturers.
Considering the manpower problem, the ministry has decided to extend the services of the faculty members to 65 years for their retirement. Besides, the ministry officials wanted to recruit teachers on contractual basis offering a handsome salary and other financial package, the ministry sources said. It also offers alluring promotional opportunities for the lecturers, assistant professors, associate professors and professors.
At present the state-run medical colleges are facing teacher shortage, especially in the departments of medicine, surgery and gynaecology cum obstetrics. Now 98 academics (professors) have been working in 21 medical colleges against a sanctioned post of 159 while 128 associate professors have been rendering their services against 193 sanctioned posts.
The ministry has decided to recruit 396 professors, 612 associate professors, 954 assistant professors and 2,816 lecturers for 30 medical colleges in the country. The ministry also decided to introduce a new compulsory subject in the MBBS course namely Behavior Science to mitigate all sorts of physicians-patients dispute at work places. This course will be included in the nursing courses also. The formal proposal for introducing medical education cadre will be submitted to the Prime Minister's Office very soon, Serajul Islam said.
-Tapan Khan, AA
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