Medical degree of the private medical college accepted
2011-09-03
The Higher Education Ministry has given permission to the private medical college in Malabe, South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine Pvt Ltd., to offer MBBS degrees.
Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake has granted permission to the private medical college on August 30, 2011 through gazette extraordinary No. 1721/19.
The gazette has instructed that the construction work of the private medical college be completed in six months. Lecture rooms, laboratory facilities, teaching rooms and other technological facilities have to be completed during this period.
Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake when inquired said the private medical college will be offering the MBBS degree from this year. The Minister said the university earlier offered a Russian medical degree and would now become the first private university in Sri Lanka to offer a MBBS degree.
The spokesperson of the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) said the associations’ central committee that met on August 28th with the participation of members from 90 GMOA branches island wide had decided to object to the MBBS offered by the illegal private university. “The institution cannot offer an MBBS degree; it is a business endeavor like Sakvithi. Politicians and businessmen are trying to collect monies from the children. The Medical Council has not approved it. The BoI has not approved it when registering it as a company.
When commencing operations, the university has in 2001 agreed to the External Affairs Ministry that a teaching hospital would be launched to train the students. How can students receiving the necessary on-hand training without such a facility?” he questioned.
The private medical college in Malabe currently operated in collaboration with Nizhny Nivgorod State Medical Academy of the Russian Federation.
Higher Education Ministry Secretary Sunil Jayantha Navaratne said the Aquinas College, NIBM and Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology have been given permission to offer degrees and that the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine has been given permission to issue a medical degree.
He however said the Ministry looked into the offering of the degree and not the medical training at a teaching hospital looked at by the Medical Council.
“It is up to the institute to send the students to a teaching hospital for training. They will have to do so in order to receive the Medical Council’s recognition. We have only given permission to issue a degree through the gazette notification,” he said.
