Aug. 3: The Assam Medical College and Hospital (AMCH) — the oldest institution of medical education in the region — has decided to introduce a course to teach students how to deal with specialised cardiac problems.
AMCH principal-cum-chief superintendent Debojit Hazarika and Hem Chandra Kalita, the head of the department of cardiology, said the necessary approval to introduce the two-year course has been taken from the state government and it would start from January.
“It is a known fact now that several problems, related to cardiology, has almost attained an epidemic form in the Northeast. On the other hand, there is an acute shortage of trained manpower to deal with this mammoth problem. This is why we have decided to begin the course in our college,” Hazarika added.
For the students of the Northeast, the scope of becoming a heart specialist is very limited as the competition for the few seats available in premier institutions like the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, or the Chandigarh-based Post Graduate Institute (PGI) are extremely tough.
“If this trend continues, we will not be able to produce many heart specialists in the next several years. This is why we hope that the new course here will provide some succour to the numerous patients of the region,” Kalita, a renowned heart specialist, said.
The course has been approved by the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou), which has already started such postgraduate diploma courses in some select health education institutions of the country.
The approval of the course at the AMCH is a result of the visit by Prof. A.K. Agarwal, the director of the Ignou School of Health Sciences, who visited the cardiology department early this year and found the department perfect to introduce the course.
The approval from the state government’s health department has come through a letter issued on June 30.
“Those with MD will get the first preference. Those with MBBS too, will be considered for the postgraduate diploma in the community cardiology course,” Kalita added.
The AMCH will be the only institution in the region to have introduced the course,” Kalita added.
