What happened: Anum Qaiser, an overseas Pakistani medical student at the Ameer-ud-Din medical college Lahore, withdrew her admission from the MBBS program shortly after the academic session started. She cited mental and physical health reasons caused to her by the college which led her to take such a step.
Details: In her letter to the principal of the institute, she wrote that as she was an overseas citizen from Canada, she had no choice but to live in the ‘hostel’ provided by the college which was a rented building, 45 minutes away from the campus with no mess service, even though the college charged for the mess service with the tuition fee. She wrote that in her apartment which had 2 rooms, 11 girls were forced to live in the same apartment causing issues of privacy and the sanitation of the limited washrooms. While the institute provided transport from the hostel to the campus, it would not be enough for the number of students forcing them to stand the entire journey.
More: She then wrote about the conditions of the academic block of the college, she wrote that the professors would be disrespectful towards the students, would be avoiding of any questions from the students, and would leave as soon as the lecture ended which sometimes the students could not understand because of the echoing of the microphone and would sometimes deny to share study resources or the slides they would simply read in class. She added that the professors sometimes also did gender-based discrimination and would aid the male members by only answering their questions and that for some subjects like ethics and professionalism, there were no professors appointed to teach. In the end, she wrote, that it was a devastating experience, from academics to living conditions which lead her to withdraw from the program as it had a toll on her mental and physical health. She hoped her withdrawal and letter to the principal served as an ‘eye-opener’ of Pakistan’s healthcare sector.
PC: Twitter