LAHORE: The Executive Committee of the Pakistan Medical & Dental Council (PMDC) has accorded approval to the proposal seeking increase in duration of the Bachelors of Dental Surgery (BDS) programme by one year, bringing it on a par with the five-year MBBS degree programme.

The major initiative was taken on the recommendations of all the four provinces with the stated purpose of adding to the worth of the BDS programme locally as well as internationally.

The scheme will be implemented from next year as the process of revising the BDS curriculum and syllabus as per international standards was in its final stage under a high level committee comprising PMDC and Higher Education Commission experts.

The committee was also considering a proposal to include new and emerging subjects related to clinical and biological sciences in the BDS programme, a senior PMDC official said.

“The executive and dental committees of the Council have increased the BDS programme duration, taking into account the recommendations of vice-chancellors, experts and educationists associated with medical and dental education institutions of the country”, PMDC Registrar Dr Raja Amjad Mahmood told Dawn.

He said it was a matter of grave concern that the Pakistani BDS programme was not recognised by the USA and European countries. It had been among the most sought-after programmes for the medics, he added.

The step promises huge monetary benefits to private institutions

He said Pakistani doctors had to appear in the Overseas Registration Examination in UK in order to get registered with General Dental Council (GDC) despite having a BDS degree. The UK had declared that the GDC registration was mandatory for doctors to practice dentistry unsupervised in the country.

Similarly, the dentists had to pass National Board Dental Examination, USA, to apply in various American dental universities and to meet the license requirements to practice there.

“Now after the PMDC decision, Pakistan could take up the issue with the European countries and US to get recognised its BDS degree programme”, Dr Mahmood said.

He said the PMDC had received suggestions from all the stakeholders with regard to increasing the BDS duration and changing the programme’s nomenclature to Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS).

He said the initiative was likely to be implemented from the next academic session at all the medical and dental education institutes of the country.

Another senior PMDC official privy to the development claimed the decision was taken largely to please the private dental institutions who were lobbying for the move to get monetary benefits. Requesting anonymity, he said the private institutions would get additional fee from the students after increase of one-year duration in the BDS programme.

“This move initiated from Sindh and was later shared with other provinces”, he said, adding that the private medical and dental colleges wanted to influence the PMDC.

Sharing some fresh statistics in this regard, he said presently there were total 40 dental colleges in Punjab. Of them 29 were in private sector and only 11 state-owned, having total 2,415 seats all over the country.

With the introduction of new scheme, every private college would be roughly getting 50 more seats annually, translating into millions of rupees financial benefit for these institutions.

The official claimed that a majority of the senior dentists had proposed that the duration of the BDS programme should be increased but with the same fee structure to ensure “transparency”.

Analysing the PMDC decision from the patients and students perspectives, he said the number of admissions to the BDS programme might drop due to increase in its duration as the dentistry was already low on candidates’ priority.

The decision might cause more shortage of dentists in the country because presently there were only 13,716 registered practitioners in Pakistan that meant one dentist for 13,441 people, the official said.

Published in Dawn, April 9th, 2015