Pune's Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical College faces Faculty Shortage, Infrastructure Gaps
Pune: The Pune Municipal Corporation's (PMC) Bharat Ratna Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical College continues to struggle with a severe shortage of faculty and teaching staff, coupled with inadequate infrastructure and patient footfall at its affiliated Kamla Nehru Hospital. These issues are significantly affecting the clinical training and education of medical students enrolled in the institution.
Despite enrolling its first batch of MBBS students four years ago, the hospital still lacks essential facilities such as an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and functioning operating theatres (OTs), both of which are critical for patient care and hands-on student learning. Adding to the burden, the hospital also faces a deficiency of nursing and sanitation personnel, while the college itself lacks sufficient laboratory facilities and medical equipment necessary for standard teaching, reports the Daily.
Since January this year, both the National Medical Commission (NMC), India's medical education regulatory authority and the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) have served multiple notices to the institution. These communications questioned the college's compliance with regulatory norms and warned of potential withdrawal of approval and cancellation of affiliation.
In response to persistent faculty shortages, PMC has issued 23 recruitment advertisements to hire staff on a temporary basis. Officials noted that, as per NMC guidelines, if a reserved-category faculty is not available, a doctor from the unreserved category can be appointed temporarily for up to 11 months. Naval Kishore Ram, the PMC commissioner, said, "In the three notices to us, NMC has cited a shortage of faculty and indoor patient admissions. We have been issuing advertisements to fill the posts, but we are facing trouble in recruiting reserved quota candidates. NMC has also raised some technical queries related to cadavers and the number of labs, which are being resolved on priority."
The college's officiating dean, Dr Shilpa Pratinidhi, conceded, "At least 83% of our teaching staff is working on a temporary basis. Our proposal to recruit staff for the hospital to ensure enough admissions is pending with the Urban Development Department. For the medical college, we have 99 class-I posts approved for permanent faculties, out of which we have been able to recruit 17 as of now. We still need 25 more professors, assistant professors, and associate professors for our 22 departments, for which we conduct walk-in interviews regularly."
During a recent inspection of the facility, the PMC Commissioner instructed authorities to speed up the construction of the college building and hostels to ensure that the institution can meet the necessary standards without further delay. Dr Nina Borade, PMC's chief public health officer, said, "The commissioner visited the site which is located within Naidu Hospital premises, and checked the ongoing construction. He has also instructed the building department to ensure that the deadlines are met. We are sure that the building construction deadline will be met. As far as the shortage of faculties is concerned. We will recruit faculties from unreserved category on a temporary basis for the reserved category, which is allowed under NMC norms, so that we can meet the requirement needs".
Additional municipal commissioner Pradeep Chandran said that they planned to shift some of the classrooms to their new building near Naidu Hospital by August. He mentioned that they currently had a total of 400 students and that for the new batch, they would inaugurate two wings in the new building.
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