Medical Deans consider urgent talks with President on fallout
CA ruling on SAITM – SLMC ponders appealing to Supreme Court
As the crisis over private medical colleges intensified this week, Deans of the eight state medical faculties are considering seeking an urgent meeting with Pre s i d e n t Maithripala Sirisena next week to discuss the “consequences” of a court ruling on medical education in Sri Lanka.
This was while the Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC) was moving in the direction of appealing to the Supreme Court against a Court of Appeal (CA) ruling with regard to provisional registration of students of the privately-run South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM). The ratification of the move to appeal to the Supreme Court is expected when the SLMC meets on Wednesday, with a 42-day window to file such an appeal.
There was also an outpouring of support and commitment not only by medical professional organizations but also by trade unions such as the Association of Medical Specialists ( AMS) and the Government Medical Officers’ Association ( GMOA) towards legally strengthening the role played by the SLMC.
For, the consensus among medical as well as other professionals is that the SLMC plays a ‘ crucial, essential and indispensable’ role with regard to medical education and the practice of medicine.
“The SLMC acts as the watchdog of the public or patients, protecting the interests of these voiceless masses, even though many may not realize it,” was the view put in a nutshell by a senior doctor and echoed by numerous other doctors, academics and even non-medical professionals.
The AMS will meet this week to discuss and get-together with all relevant stakeholders to make a draft to strengthen the SLMC and then put it to the government to bring about legislation to implement it, an AMS spokesperson said.
GMOA President Dr. Anuruddha Padeniya said that in any country the monitoring mechanism for medical education and medical practice is the Medical Council. As such, in Sri Lanka the SLMC grants recognition for medical education institutes considering several criteria, while it also registers all those qualified to practise medicine and regulates medical practice. Therefore, the government has a fundamental obligation to uphold the principles on which the SLMC has been established as otherwise the rights of the public are at stake.
Higher Education Minister Lakshman Kiriella, meanwhile, is scheduled to meet the eight Deans next week, as they in turn are considering whether they should hold an in- depth discussion with the President on this issue.
“We feel that there is an urgent need to discuss what we should do in the context of this ruling and spell out not only to the decision-makers but also to the public what bearing this ruling would have on higher education in general and medical education in particular,” a source close to the Deans told the Sunday Times.
The eight Deans, the Sunday Times understands, were meeting this weekend to discuss the “conse- quences” of the CA ruling on medical education per se in Sri Lanka. They are from the state medical faculties under the Colombo, Peradeniya, Jaffna, Kelaniya, Sri Jayewardenepura, Ruhuna, Raja Rata and Eastern Universities.
As a flurry of meetings are also being held in different quarters, SAITM published huge advertisements in newspapers about its victory and the state universities braced themselves for widespread protests by their students.
On Thursday, a large group of student protesters snaking towards President’s House were tear- gassed and dispersed with water-cannons, while the GMOA launched a day’s token strike on Friday against the violence perpetrated on the students by the authorities.
Pointing out that the CA has kept strictly to the letter of the law in giving its ruling, a source said that the SLMC should necessarily go to the Supreme Court which would look at this issue in a wider context along with its social repercussions.
Many sources in medical circles and other professionals were also “disturbed” by the turn of events that medical education could take in the country as well as a drop in international esteem for the medical profession in Sri Lanka. They were vociferous in their views that the SLMC should get its act together and make a strong appeal against the CA ruling to the Supreme Court.
With regard to the situation in seven of the eight state medical faculties, the Sunday Times learns that though they are not ‘officially’ closed, students are not attending lectures on the grounds that they have to make the public aware about the private medical education fiasco in the country.
“Students are refraining from attending lectures,” a source said, adding that only the Colombo Medical Faculty students were attending lectures after a one-day token strike. But they too were said to be considering a boycott of lectures from tomorrow.