PESHAWAR, Sept 5: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has planned to set up a medical college in Charsadda district to cope with the increasing number of students in the province, according to officials.

They said that the new medical college, to be named after great freedom fighter Bacha Khan, would cost Rs230 million.

Charsadda had already a district headquarters hospital but health department would need to build a new 150-bed hospital before applying for registration of the college with Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), they added.

“The Khyber Medical College (KMC), Peshawar has 250 seats, Ayub Medical College (AMC) Abbottabad has 200 seats, Khyber Girls Medical College has 50 seats, Saidu Medical College (SMC) Swat 50 seats, Gomal Medical College (GMC), Dear Ismail Khan has 50 seats and Bacha Khan Medical College Mardan has 50 seats,” they said.

Last year, the eight medical colleges had enrolled 152 extra students against the sanctioned seats of 600 owing to the rising number of students.

This year, a total of 12,000 students appeared in the entrance test for admission into these medical colleges which means that number of students has increased manifold.

“Considering this, we are planning to establish one medical college in very district to meet the future challenges in the area of medical education.

The province has already got one college in every division but it cannot meet the demand,” officials said.According to them, a meeting had taken place a fortnight ago wherein the government asked the health officials to hammer out plan as early as possible. “In line with the chief minister's instructions, we have sent a draft proposal to the government in which some suggestions have been made,” officials associated with the task told Dawn .

The meeting had been attended by the minister of education and representatives of Higher Education Commission and high-ranking health officials.

Officials said that government wanted Abdul Wali Khan University (AWKU) Mardan to build Bacha Khan Medical College in Charsadda while PMDC's rules clearly said that all medical colleges should be affiliated with Khyber Medical University (KMU) Peshawar.

“It is most important as it can create problems at a later stage because the students would be get degrees from KMU while AWKU Mardan, which would finance the BMC would object to it because it would like to give degrees that would not be possible due to PMDC's rules,” they said.

The AWKU Mardan, officials said, was willing to improve its international ratings by establishing BMC Charsadda but its dream would not come true because in the presence of KMU, it could not award degrees.

Secondly, the college would need full-fledged teaching faculty that would not be readily available, particularly the teachers of basic sciences, they said. Some of the government-run medical colleges still lacked the desired number of teachers of basic sciences despite their establishment four years ago.

“However, the government is eager to provide required human resources as well as monetary allocation to build the college at any cost in the native district of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, commonly known as Bacha Khan,” officials said.