AFMC set for major revamp

Pranjal Bhuyan / TNN / Dec 12, 2007, 03:38 IST

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Armed Forces Medical College is all set to increase its faculty strength besides inaugurating a whole new block to commemorate the college's diamond jubilee next year.

PUNE: Despite the denial of deemed university status, the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC) is all set to increase its faculty strength to fill up the existing vacancies, besides inaugurating a whole new block to commemorate the college's diamond jubilee next year.
Simultaneously, the college, India's premier medical teaching institute for the armed forces, has no plans to seek deemed university status once again.
Speaking to TOI on Tuesday, Lieutenant General S.K. Kaul, commandant and director of AFMC, said that additional faculty for various departments would be in place by mid-2008. Currently, the college is among very few medical institutions to have a faculty strength close to 90 per cent of the sanctioned numbers.
"Our endeavour is to fill up the remaining faculty posts as well. We will do that as per regulations of the Medical Council of India (MCI). However, even at this moment, we have one of the best faculty-student ratio, much higher than any other college under the Maharashtra Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (MIMSR)," said Kaul.

The existing faculty strength at AFMC is 148 and there are another 23 faculty members in the AFMC affiliated College of Nursing (CON). The AFMC has a total of 20 departments catering to various specialised branches of medicine.
The AFMC will also soon have a new spacious block which will be inaugurated in May 2008 coinciding with the 60th anniversary year of the college. The three-storey Diamond Jubilee Block, built next to the dental department, would house the departments of biochemistry, microbiology and physiology.

Although the college is located in a 160-acre campus, lack of proper space for the increasing infrastructure has been a major concern during the recent past. The college had, likewise, inaugurated a Golden Jubilee Block in 1998 during the AFMC's 50th year of inception, which now houses 18 departments.
The CON will also start its masters (MSc) degree course in Nursing from the next academic year. "To start with we will keep the total number of intake at 10 students each year. All the students will be from our BSc course pass-outs," said the AFMC commandant.
Regarding the recent decision of the union government not to grant deemed university status to the college, Kaul refused to accept it as a setback. "We did not want to turn the college into a trust. There was the feeling that establishing a trust might affect the standard of education," he said.
According to Kaul, the deemed university recognition matter is finished as far as the college authorities are concerned. "We do not have any plans to seek such status once again for the time being," he said.
The commandant pointed out that despite its lack of deemed status, the AFMC has won distinction among the 39 medical colleges affiliated with the MIMSR. "Our students have secured 12 out of the 16 gold medals for best performance in various specialisation this year." Kaul said.
Meanwhile, the lamp lighting ceremony of the 42nd batch of nursing cadets from the College of Nursing, AFMC, took place on Tuesday. A total of 30 nursing cadets from the first year B.Sc. Nursing course were administered the pledge of duty during the occasion.

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