The state cabinet has approved the Meghalaya Health Service Academic Rules 2024, part of the process in getting the Shillong Medical College up and running.
“We have to come up with service rules for the recruitment of faculty to run the medical college,” Health and Family Welfare Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh said today. “We were happy to do that and now we go ahead and go to the next stage to prepare for the operationalisation of the Shillong Medical College at the earliest.”
Other aspects have also seen progress, Lyngdoh told reporters, informing that tenders for construction work have been issued and the state government is looking at affiliation for the college. This last one has hit a snag but the government is looking at other options so that the college can start offering courses in 2025-26.
A separate Tura Medical College is also in the works but this will take more time to operationalise because a few extra modalities have to be worked out first.
Teaching faculty will be drawn from the state’s doctors for the most part. The college will make use of already existing hospital facilities, such as those at Shillong Civil Hospital and Ganesh Das Hospital but infrastructure like the operating theatres, laboratories, testing facilities, etc all need to be upscaled, the minister said.
