MALAPPURAM: The Union Ministry of Health has directed the Medical Council of India (MCI) to verify the infrastructural facilities at the Government Medical College in Manjeri prior to giving the final nod for admitting students to the fifth batch MBBS course in the next academic session. The MCI team is likely to visit the college as per the direction. In January, the MCI had rejected the approval for the admission of the new batch of MBBS citing a many deficiencies at the college and hospital.
Following this, the college administration approached the Union Health ministry for renewing the approval. The Principal of the college Dr. K. Mohanan had submitted an application for the renewal along with documents of the corrective steps taken to resolve the deficiencies both to the Ministry and the MCI. “The union government has accepted our application for the approval of the course during a personal hearing held in New Delhi. We have also submitted all the documents after resolving the deficiencies cited earlier. The MCI team will soon verify this before the final nod,” Dr. Mohanan said.
The ministry was reluctant to approve the demand without verification by the MCI, he added. Meanwhile, as many as 28 doctors who were recently appointed by the government in order to secure MCI’s approval have not joined the college so far. Besides this, many other infrastructural deficiencies pointed out by the MCI in January have also cast a shadow over the approval. The college authorities have to ensure everything is in place before the MCI's inspection.
