Calcutta, Dec. 3: West Bengal’s first medical university will start functioning from the academic session beginning 2003, state minister for health and family welfare Surjya Kanta Mishra said today.

The Siliguri-based North Bengal Medical College will be brought under its ambit.

University of Health Services, West Bengal, will be initially housed at the office of the health and family welfare in Salt Lake, a Calcutta exurb, and later shifted to the building adjoining the Salt Lake subdivisional hospital.

Madan Mohan Chaudhuri, a retired professor of the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, has been appointed vice-chancellor of the university for three years.

Mishra said the university was formally set up yesterday, with the West Bengal University of Health Sciences Act 2002 coming into effect The Act had been passed in the last session of the Assembly.

The minister said all seven medical colleges in the state will be brought under the new university. Besides NBMCH and the four medical colleges in Calcutta, the others are Bankura Medical College and Burdwan Medical College.

Three proposed medical colleges in Midnapore, Malda and in the SSKM hospital, Calcutta, will also be under its control.

NBMCH principal Utpal Dutta welcomed the move.

“It will facilitate improved coordination with regard to discharging of administrative functions at all the teaching hospitals in the state,” he said.

All homeopathy, ayurvedic, unani and other alternative medicine, hospitals and nursing homes, pharmacy and dental education will function under it. Courses on laboratory technology and paramedical subjects will be affiliated to the university.

“It is aimed at establishing uniformity in standards of education in all faculties of health sciences, including formulation and implementation of syllabi and curricula for various academic courses, with a view to augmenting the quality of such education and achieving the highest standards of academic excellence at all levels,” the minister said.

Mishra added that a three-member “search committee” was constituted, comprising the state health secretary, director-general of health services, Union ministry of health and family welfare, and the director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research, to select the vice-chancellor.

Officials said the new university will henceforth be the only “competent” institution in the state to give affiliation to all new courses in medical, para- medical and para-dental disciplines and conduct the courses there.

They maintained that students studying either in the Burdwan Medical College or any other medical college in the state could take admission to the new university during the next academic session by producing “migration certificates” from their respective colleges.

“However, all the existing courses will continue as per the existing arrangement, till they are gradually given affiliation by the new university,” they added.