Hyderabad, August 03: Hinting at infrastructural “lapses” in government- run medical colleges in the State, members of the Osmania Medical College Doctors Forum rued that students from the State may be heading for private-run colleges in neighbouring States like Karnataka. “The medical policy in the State should focus on infrastructure development, in order to retain students, ensuring on the long term that there are more doctors investing their time in Andhra Pradesh,” said the president of the Doctor’s Forum, Dr K Suresh at an event organised by the Doctor’s Forum and the AP State Aids Control Society (APSACS), involving college students at Hussainsagar on Sunday. Revealing that “there have been an encouraging increase in the number of medical students from villages,” Dr Suresh indicated that a considerable proportion of the medical students are shying away from the cluster of 11 major medical colleges in the State. “The students usually cite lack of facilities in the medical colleges as a reason for leaving the State for further studies,” a member of the Doctor’s Forum observed.
Members of the Forum also noted that countries like China and Nepal are being increasingly favoured by medical students as preferred destinations of studying medicine. As such, Dr Suresh opined that “changes need to be implemented at the policy-making level, and the forum, in this regard has been pushing for positive changes in government medical colleges.” Incidentally, the event for the day, which saw participation from students in a dozen-odd colleges in the city also incorporated a programme on HIV awareness conducted by APSACS.
The programme, which commenced on board a leisure cruiser on the Hussainsagar lake saw K Nirupama Rao of the APSACS conducting the session on HIV with the students.
“Along with knowledge about the disease, a session was also conducted on the importance of life skills in the workplace and ethics, which was received well by the college students,” Dr Suresh said. In a related note, Dr Suresh said that the Medical College Doctor’s Forum has recently initiated a number of social action programmes, including the development and application
of an anti rabies vaccine for the use of the general public. Which would, according to Dr Suresh, “be applied in the context of the society and general population in due course of time.”
–Agencies–