Homoeopathy colleges short of teaching staff
Faculty positions in almost all State-run homoeopathy colleges are lying vacant, reports Gaurav Saigal.
Students taking admission to homoeopathy colleges in Uttar Pradesh will have to do without adequate number of teachers in the forthcoming session.
Faculty positions in almost all State-run homoeopathy colleges are lying vacant while the process of advertising the posts or interview has yet to start.
Thus, students opting for this traditional system of medicine as career will have to look for answers on their own.
A college, as per the norms of the Central Council of Homoeopathy (CCH), requires a strength of 43 teachers, including 15 lecturer, 15 reader and 13 professors.
Thus, the total strength of teachers at the seven homoepathy colleges across the State should be at least 300. The cumulative strength of teachers in different State homoeopathy colleges in UP is around 75, while the posts sanctioned currently are 127.
Not just teaching in classes, education through in-door hospitals of the college is missing too. In-door hospitals are an essential part of the curriculum in any medical course. Since teachers are few, most patients in the hospital wing of the colleges are treated at the out patients departments (OPD).
Since students do not have access to in-door teaching they fail to grasp clinical training even during their internship at different government hospitals.
Training at district hospital is for only six months where a candidate is required to learn technical aspects of patient management. Another major shortcoming at the homoeopathy colleges is cadaver training.
This essential part of the anatomy is rare for these students particularly due to shortage of teaching staff. Interestingly, only two colleges of Lucknow, and Moradabad have a full-time principal while all other colleges have ad hoc arrangements for the post.
Colleges also lack facility to run MD courses.
For each MD course at least two specialty teachers are required in addition to the faculty that runs the undergraduate course. But most of the colleges do not fulfill norms for running even undergraduate courses. The CCH has recently sent a proposal to start MD courses in eight subjects but with the shortage of teachers, the new courses seems to be a non-starter.