The Sindh Government has decided to establish Sindh Medical & Dental Council (SMDC), it was learnt on Tuesday. A draft of proposed law to constitute the Sindh Medical & Dental Council has been hammered out and the government will seek opinion from the provincial law department over the piece of the legislation, sources said. The government will get the legislation be approved from the assembly within three months, sources said. Sindh Health Minister Azra Fazal Pechuho has confirmed the government’s move for constitution of SMDC. The minister said that Sindh had expressed serious reservations over constitution of Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC). “Other provinces have also reservations over the PMC”, she added. The parliament in September passed a legislation to replace Pakistan Medical & Dental Council (PMDC) with the PMC as regulatory body for the medical sector. President Dr Arif Alvi later signed the Pakistan Medical Commission Bill 2020 into a law. The law was passed to help regulate the medical sector through the implementation of uniform standards to ensure the quality of training and educational qualifications in the field of medicine and dentistry. However, the Sindh Government, Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) and the Young Doctors Association (YDA) rejected the president’s ordinance to abolish the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) to form the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC). According to the PMDC employees, police raided their building and sealed all important documents and told employees that they were off for an entire week. Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho had said that the federal government had killed the PMDC overnight. She said that the matter hadn’t even been taken to the Commonwealth Council. Secretary General Pakistan Medical Association Dr Qaiser Sajjad slammed the move by President Alvi, saying that doctors’ registrations and licenses had been withheld across the country.
