The Hindu : Kerala News : MCI to inspect medical college today

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Wednesday, Jun 07, 2006

Kerala

Kerala

MCI to inspect medical college today

Staff Reporter

To evaluate its facilities for admitting students this year

KOCHI: The Medical Council of India (MCI) will inspect Cooperative Medical College here on Wednesday and Thursday to check its facilities for admitting students this year.

Into its sixth year, the college authorities are hopeful that the teething troubles will be over soon.

The medical college facilities need to match the parameters required for conducting classes as well as the clinical and surgical facilities at the teaching hospital.

However, there is a lot of scepticism regarding the college meeting all the parameters.

While the college has about 23-24 departments in which out-patient services are held, ten operation theatres and consultation in three super-specialty departments, it is said to be yet struggling to find enough people to fill in the vacancies in various departments, specially in the para-clinical sections like anatomy, physiology etc.

"It is a crisis in the entire country," said S. Unnikrishna Pillai, Director of the Cooperative Academy of Professional Education under which the college has come up at Kalamassery. "In fact, the Health Minister had pointed out that there are far more medical colleges than the number of teachers available for teaching many subjects," Dr. Pillai said.

"When we started the college in Kochi, there was no medical college in the private sector. Now there are many," he added.

The Government being the patron of the college, it has helped the college in a number of ways from the beginning, said Dr. Pillai. Hence, it is with consultation between the Cooperation and Health Ministries that some teachers from the Government Medical Colleges have been deputed to the CMC.

The teaching hospital has 500 beds in the general section and 55 in the private section, said a hospital official.

All the intensive care units like the Medical ICU, CCU, Paediatric ICU, Neonatology ICU are fully functional, he said.

The college continues to have a teaching attachment with General Hospital so as to help its students see and observe many more cases than what are available at CMC Hospital.

The CMC, apart from conducting OP in the hospital, also has extension work at five centres near Kalamassery.

The internees and house surgeons in the college hospital are a worried lot regarding the status of the college.

If the college fails to be recognised by the Union Health Ministry, it will be a loss of a year for them.

The college could not admit students for two years in 2002 and 2003 because of lack of basic infrastructure like college building and attached hospital.

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