No medical college for MBBS degree in two provinces

Published On: January 23, 2018 06:15 AM NPT By: Bishnu Prasad Aryal

Province 3 leads the number of colleges while Province 6 remains last

KATHMANDU, Jan 23: Two provinces of the country don't have any medical college for the bachelor's degree in medicine, though the nation has already adopted federalism.

According to the University Grants Commission (UGC), a total of 74 medical colleges run classes across the country. However, provinces 6 and 7 are yet to have any medical college for medicine, said Shree Krishna Giri, spokesman for the Ministry of Health.

"Karnali Academy of Health Sciences (KAHS) is being run in Province 6 but it does not have bachelor's degree in medicine," he added. KAHS operates health sciences and nursing classes only.

Province 3 has 43 medical colleges, which is the highest in Nepal while Province 1 has nine, Province 2 has 11, Province 4 has six and Province 5 has five such colleges, says the UGC report recently uploaded on its online portal.

The country has a total of 4,108 government health facilities available for a population of 29 million people. The number of health facilities is the highest in Province 2 with 789 health facilities while the lowest number of health facilities is in Province 6 at 362.

Province 1 has a total population of 4,534,943, Province 2 has 5,404,145, Province 3 has 5,529,452, Province 4 has 2,403,757, Province 5 has 4,499,272, Province 6 has 1,570,418 and Province 7 has a population of 2,552,517, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).

Of the total colleges in the country, 101 campuses are related to science and technology while there are 935 management colleges. Likewise, there are 329 colleges for humanities social sciences while the number of colleges for education is 609, medicine is 74 and English is 31.

"There are 196 campuses in Province 1; 126 in Province 2; 612 in Province 3; 124 in Province 4; 197 in Province 5; 56 in Province 6 and 96 in Province 7," says the UGC report. Like other indicators, Province 3 leads the number of campuses too while Province 6 has the least number of campuses.