Two years since the start of the MPhil in forensic medicine at the University of Health Sciences (UHS), the programme is yet to be registered with the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), The Express Tribune has learnt.
Students have expressed concern that if the programme is not recognised by the PMDC, they will not be able to get jobs once they graduate. “If the PMDC doesn’t register it, the degree will be useless as no public hospital will employ us,” said one student. Two batches of students have been enrolled in the programme. None have completed it yet.
A senior professor said that the programme violated several PMDC requirements. “Under PMDC rules, as well as a Supreme Court ruling, only doctors can observe and conduct autopsies at public hospitals. There is also a rule that male doctors autopsy males and female doctors autopsy females. But there are some students in the MPhil programme who are not medical doctors and are getting medico-legal training,” said the professor, on the condition of anonymity.
According to documents available with The Express Tribune, the UHS had written to King Edward Medical University (KEMU) asking that its MPhil forensic medicine students be allowed to observe autopsies there. “We declined because their programme isn’t registered with the PMDC and no non-medical doctor can observe autopsies,” said a senior KEMU professor.
The UHS then wrote to Allama Iqbal Medical College, whose principal, Professor Mahmood Shaukat, agreed to the request on January 12.
A UHS official said one of the teachers in the programme, a Dr Allah Rakha, was not a medical doctor. Another teacher, Dr Amir Bashir, was an MPhil student in the KEMU forensic sciences programme, he said.
UHS spokesman Muhammad Atif said that the university had written to the PMDC on the subject and was trying to get the programme registered. “UHS is in contact with PMDC for recognition and our visiting faculty, made up of medical doctors from affiliated medical colleges” he maintained.
He said that the programme was approved by the Higher Education Commission, meaning that the graduating students could be employed to teach at universities. “We started this program because there is extreme shortage of experts in forensic medicine,” he said. “The program is aimed at producing faculty in the subject.”
He said that there were two students in the programme who were not medical doctors. Dr Allah Rakha, he said, had a PhD in forensic sciences from a Chinese university and had HEC approval to be a supervisor in the subject.
“The KEMU didn’t exactly refuse, rather we couldn’t set terms with them and then the AIMC accepted,” he added.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 28th, 2013.