In Thiruvanthapuram the Kerala governments gave the green signal for setting up a medical university in Thrissur. The Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan gave details about the university to the reporters after the weekly cabinet meeting. On Thursday gave nod for the formation of a combined university for all systems of medicines with separate board of studies, faculty and board of examination for each stream.
The proposed Kerala University for Medical and Allied Sciences will handle all the academic activities, including the conduct of examinations from 2009-10. Before this all the colleges under each stream including paramedical colleges would be affiliated to this university. The University Act and statute will be formulated within six months and will be presented in the Assembly.
For deciding the policy matters of the university, the government has appointed a high-level committee headed by Health Minister P K Sreemathi in which the secretaries of Health, Higher Education & medical education heads from allopathy, Ayurveda and homoeo have been made members. Dr Usha Titus has been appointed as the project director.
Health Minister P K Sreemathi while announcing the decision after the Cabinet meeting said that there should not be any apprehensions on the combined university. “The interests of all the systems of medicine will be protected while forming the university. The government does not intend to join all the streams mechanically,” she said.
The Minister said that the government had taken the decision to go for a combined university after studying all the three committee reports. The LDF Government has appointed three separate committees headed by Dr.B Ekbal for modern medicine, Dr K Sankaran for Ayurveda and Dr K Janakikutty for homoeo to submit a detailed project on the medical university.
The proposed university will be set up on the Thrissur Medical College Hospital campus for which 25 acres of land will be utilized. It was the promise made by the LDF in the manifesto that a medical university would be set up to enforce a systematic and scientific procedure in the medical education sector, said Sreemathi.
Apart from affiliation of colleges, the proposed university will give more importance to research and development. The State Cabinet also gave administration sanction for the setting up of the ESI Medical College at Paripally in Kollam for which the Centre had already given nod.
