Patna Dental College and Hospital. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Nov. 9: Before becoming a professional to cure your toothache, the would-be dentists at Patna Dental College and Hospital (PDCH) are fighting decay in the infrastructure of their institution.

Virtually tired of faculty and space crunch, a majority of them blame the state government for the sorry state of affairs in their college. There has been a sharp decline in the quality of education in the institution over the past few years.

The biggest challenge before the college at present is acute shortage of faculty.

“We have a sanctioned strength of 49 teachers but at present there are just 21,” said Dr D.K. Singh, the principal of the college.

The situation can be gauged from the fact that the only state-run dental college in Bihar has just two seats at the postgraduation-level — one each in prosthodontics and oral pathology department.

“We have just two postgraduation seats as per the vacancies sanctioned by the Union ministry of health and medical education because of lack of faculty. This year, we could not take in any student in the oral pathology department because of faculty shortage,” said Singh.

Singh said: “Two students were given admission to the prosthodontics department.”

The dental college students’ trouble does not end here. Their classes are often disrupted allegedly because of shortage of classrooms and laboratories.

A second year student of the institution told The Telegraph: “I come to the college everyday but often I find all classrooms occupied. At times, there are no teachers. Classes are frequently cancelled and we have to go back home.”

Another student said: “Such deficiencies have affected us badly. The authorities concerned should look into these and help students get quality education.”

The students also demanded more attention of the Bihar government towards the state-run colleges to improve the higher education sector in the state.

The problems of budding dentists do not end with the completion of their course. They face challenges even after getting their degrees.

“After the students pass out of the college, they struggle to find jobs in the state. Our seniors have told us that there has been no vacancy for permanent dentists in the government sector in the past one decade,” said a fourth year student of BDS at PDCH.

“We do not get jobs on ad hoc basis either as the cut-off marks is too high. All these policies are aimed at benefiting the students of private colleges,” he added.

Established in 1960 on the premises of Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH), the only government dental college in the state has its own building.

Located in the heart of the city on the banks of Ganga, it is the only government institute in the state offering a bachelor’s degree course in dental surgery.

The institute, once projected as the centre of modern dental science imparting quality dental education and specialised patient care, is now struggling to deal with large number of people coming for treatment.

The number of patients has increased, but not the number of hands to treat them.

“Somehow we manage to cope as the number of patients keep increasing every year. We see close to 250 new registrations every day,” said the principal of the college.