SHILLONG, Dec 6 - Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma today laid the foundation stone of the State�s first Medical College here in the State Capital to be built on a Public-Private Partnership model.
The medical college would be known as Shillong Medical College and would be built near Reid Chest Hospital, Mawbah in the city.
Although the North East Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Science (NEIGRIHMS) has a medical college, there was always a demand that the State have its own medical college.
Sangma said during the foundation-laying ceremony that 110 posts of medical specialists need to be filled up in the State. Apart from the specialists there are another 150 sanctioned medical posts in the State that are lying vacant.
Officials at NEIGRIHMS have been finding it difficult to fill the entire medical specialist posts and repeated advertisement throughout the country has not yielded the desired result so far.
Together with the shortage of doctors in the State, students willing to pursue their studies in medicine are finding it difficult to get seats in medical colleges outside the State and therefore Sangma hoped that the Shillong Medical College would go a long way in addressing these problems.
A similar initiative to have a medical college in Tura has started and soon the region would also have a medical college, the CM assured. �Once we have these medical institutes people of the State would not have to rush to New Delhi, Vellore and other places for their health care. These Institutes would not only be for medical students, but for people seeking health care,� Sangma said.
