Governor Khalid Maqbool has said there is a need to open more medical colleges to meet the shortage of trained doctors as healthcare has become a major issue and we are losing billions of dollars every year in terms of economic productivity owing to "disease burden".
He was addressing to the faculty and students of the University of Health Sciences (UHS) on Monday. Vice Chancellor Professor Malik Hussain Mubbashar briefed the governor on the performance of the university for the past one year. He said the core mission of the university was to train health professionals with bio-psycho-social model and developing manpower resources for meaningful, multidisciplinary healthcare.
He said the university was promoting indigenous health research relevant to local needs and hi-tech research was being carried out on asthma, diabetes, tuberculosis, typhoid, infertility, environmental pollution, various types of cancers, genetic disorders, consanguinity, DNA analysis, metabolic syndrome and hepatitis B.
He also said his university had started MSc and BSc programmes in nursing and allied health sciences, PhD in human genetics and master programmes in family medicine and field epidemiology.
The governor was informed that UHS had been sharing problem based multiple-choice questions with Australia, Canada, UK, New Zealand, South Africa and Hong Kong as a member of IDEAL Consortium. The use of advanced technology had revolutionised the evaluation process and the university was now declaring results within 72 hours, he added.
He said an Advanced Clinical Research Centre and national reference library would be established at the new campus of UHS. Governor Punjab appreciated the role of UHS in the development of medical education and also lauded the services of VC in this regard.