Shillong, Sep 3: The National Medical Commission (NMC) has approved the Shillong Medical College (SMC) as one of the newest medical colleges in the country, Health and Family Welfare Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh informed today.
Lyngdoh said that the SMC’s first academic session will start this month, with 50 MBBS students, 85 per cent of whom will be from Meghalaya.
According to her, the approval of the SMC is a “game changer” for the state and, importantly, students are bound to work within Meghalaya and attend to the acute shortage of doctors in government-owned hospitals.
With the starting of the medical college, she informed that specialisation courses will be rolled out as the institute progresses.
The minister also said that the SMC is a brownfield facility using existing infrastructure at Shillong Civil Hospital and Ganesh Das Hospital. This gives the SMC 1,000 beds, well above the NMC requirement of 220.
According to Joram Beda, Commissioner and Secretary of Health and Family Welfare, as per the minimum standard requirement, medical colleges do not need to be on a “unitary campus”.
“It can be in two parcels. So that’s how we have the Civil Hospital and the Ganesh Das Hospital,” Beda said.
He said that as of now, for a medical college, there are three major components – a working hospital (which can be converted to a teaching hospital), the hospital should have good clinical material (these are available in both hospitals) and a good number of teaching faculty.
Lyngdoh added that with the medical college starting in the course of time, quality and excellence will be ensured in the institute. She also said that there are enough faculty members to start the medical college as per the NMC norms.
The SMC has appointed eight out of the required 16 professors, 17 out of 20 associate professors, 25 out of 25 assistant professors, 21 out of 23 senior residents and 12 out of 15 tutors and demonstrators. The biggest challenge to fill the vacancies has been to attract quality medical staff to Meghalaya.
She also informed that Meghalaya will get 94 seats into various medical colleges in the country, inclusive of NEIGRIHMS (Shillong) and RIMS (Imphal).
The fees have been kept at Rs 30,000 annually, inclusive of hostels.
The SMC will be headed by Dr Nicola Lyngdoh Iangrai who was earlier an ENT Surgeon in RIMS. She also joined Lyngdoh and Beda at the briefing.
Meanwhile, Lyngdoh said that Tura Medical College (TMC) remains a separate greenfield project that requires new infrastructure, unlike the SMC, which is being established as a brownfield institution.
Reassuring students and parents, the minister stated that Meghalaya’s quota of MBBS seats allotted by the central government will continue to remain in place.
