PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Iqbal Zafar Jhagra on Thursday called upon the higher education institutions to accord top priority to research on local health issues for better patient care.

“Doctors should strive for the betterment of patients as health is the basic requirement for the development of a nation,” he told participants of the second convocation of the Khyber Medical University here.

The event was attended by KMU VC Professor Hafizullah, registrar Dr. Fazal Mehmood, health professionals, students and their parents.

The governor conferred 206 degrees on graduates of various disciplines and 46 gold medals to top position holders besides giving away shields to 13 former university employees as mark of recognition of their work.

Attends KMU convocation, asks doctors to strive for better patient care

Dr Aqsa Ibrar, a student of KIMS, Kohat, grabbed 13 gold medals in the MBBS course. On the occasion, the governor announced Rs500,000 grant for the welfare of the KMU and Rs10,000 each for gold medalists.

He said the government had taken measures on priority to uplift health and education sector.

“It is not possible to compromise the quality of research in the institutes imparting higher education, especially in medical field,” he said.

The governor said the university by its skills driven programmes could confidently make a strong contribution to the public and private health sectors. He said the degrees given away to graduates meant new responsibilities and more devotion to work for them compared to other professions as they were dealing with precious human lives.

“I believe that today’s graduates are potential workforce of the health sector as your services will be direly needed to achieve the larger objectives of the government to help the people live a healthier and prosperous life,” he said.

VC Professor Hafizullah said the university applied innovative ways and techniques to scale up the level of learning of the students as well as medical scholars with the objective of easing burden of diseases on the people. “We are preparing visionary people in all fields to improve health care,” he said.

The VC said since its creation nine years ago, the university had tried to identify gaps in the field of health and fix them after consultation and planning.

He said the university had introduced new disciplines in the field of medical science.

“Our varsity offers the role of standardisation and setting higher goals in curriculum, evaluation and mode of instruction in medical and health education by pooling up resources and intellect through scholarship,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2016