The Pakistan Medical Association and action committee of students of Nishtar Medical College (NMC) have jointly set up a hunger strike camp at the hospital against, what they claim, biased attitude of University of Health Sciences (UHS) towards southern Punjab and they vowed to continue their protest till the achievement of their objective.
The hunger strikers included Dr Shahid Rao, Dr Wasim Rabbani, Dr Tariq Sheikh, Dr Najam Jamshed, Dr Kashif Chishti, Rana Fayaz, Chaudhry Abdul Ghaffar, Muhammad Nadeem, Amin Yousaf and Khawer Abbas.
They demanded re-marking of all papers and revision of result and separation of NMC from UHS by giving it status of a university. NMC should be attached with Bahauddin Zakariya University temporarily till it is formerly given the status of the university, they added.
The protestors warned to boycott classes and to spread the protest to other parts of region if their demands were not entertained. They blamed UHS in its result of 2nd professional MBBS examination 2005 announcement had declared 140 out of 259 candidates fail in one or more subjects.
The pass percentage (45.9 percent) at NMC was lower than the pass percentage at the other centres, which showed discrimination, they alleged and added 147 candidates of Nishtar Medical College and 107 of Quaid-e-Azam Medical College, Bahawalpur, were declared unsuccessful in third year examination while only 14 candidates of Allama Iqbal Medical College were failed.
They maintained all these students got good marks in practical and clinical examinations but they were declared fail in theory. They further said the UHS declared 55 percent MBBS final year candidates pass while 107 candidates were failed only in the subject of surgery including 98 percent candidates failed in theory. Similarly, 21 candidates have been declared pass out of 57 in BDS first professional, 23 declared pass out 54 in 3rd professional and 18 declared pass out of 38 in 2nd professional, they maintained.