TEACHER shortage, the absence of teaching hospitals and other infrastructural inadequacy having constrained education in public medical colleges, more in the 19 colleges that started academic activities after 2010, is hugely worrying. This is so because medical education is not just about passing examinations one after another but is about dealing with patients and diseases with a combine of knowledge and skills much of which depends on classroom teaching, practical experiences and a set of diverse skills. What further compounds the matter is that the authorities concerned, who hardly appear to have been worried about the situation, are more eager to increase the number of seats in public medical colleges, gradually deepening the crisis. The highest of 62.78 per cent of 833 positions of professor is now vacant in the colleges. The colleges have professors in 310 positions, leaving a shortage of 523. A case in point, as an example, is Bangabandhu Medical College in Sunamganj which has one professor, against the position of 11, who is incidentally the principal, who understandably remains occupied with other administrative chores that teaching. The college has 20 teachers against 82 positions. With 62 positions having been vacant, the institution enrolled 75 students in the fourth batch, up from 50 enrolled in the previous academic year.
Thirty-seven public medical colleges, as Directorate General of Medical Education data show, enrolled 5,380 students in the 2023鈥�24 academic year, but the number of seats increased by 1,030 in the public medical colleges this academic year. The colleges have 6,125 teaching positions, including professor, associate professor and lecturer, but 2,482 of the positions are vacant. A former president of the Bangladesh Medical Association says that the situation with the 67 private medical colleges, which enrolled 6,293 students in the past academic year, is graver. Medical colleges require to own specialised teaching hospitals near the campus, laboratories, libraries and residential facilities, keeping to the rules. But a half of public medical college continue to run without specialised teaching hospitals. Students of Bangabandhu Medical College in Sunamganj, for an example, are trained in clinical issues at Shantiganj upazila health complex, which lies about 17 kilometres off the institution鈥檚 temporary campus. Work on a 500-bed hospital is, however, reported to have been under way for the medical college on its permanent campus. Principals of a number of medical colleges say that they have repeatedly informed the authorities of the problems, but nothing has so far happened. The medical education director general, who admits to the existence of the problems, however, says that lack of coordination between divisions supervising health education and health services has slowed down the process of promotion and recruitment, noting that health services division cannot respond to the problems accordingly in time and hoping that the problems of infrastructure would be resolved in two to three years.
The government must, in such a situation, look into the issues and make the Directorate General of Medical Education and the Health Services Division, and any other agencies involved, work in sync to improve the situation as medical education is of utmost importance.
