Materia Medica Malaysiana

Call To Lift De-recognition Of CSMU Medical Degrees

The Parliamentary Roundtable (4) on the Crimea State Medical University (CSMU) controversy Sunday called on the government to lift the de-recognition of the university's medical degrees and provide the university a grace period to rectify any shortfall in its medical course.
The meeting, organised by the Parliamentary Opposition Leader's Office, also felt that the issue and reasons behind the de-recognition should be explained by Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek himself in Parliament.
The group of representatives from various organisations also agreed that Dr Chua should disclose the findings of the technical team sent to evaluate the university.
Chaired by DAP vice chairman M. Kulasegaran, the meeting also called on a fact-finding mission to be sent to CSMU to establish whether the university medical course was on par with other medical degrees recognised by the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC).
"We agree unanimously on these as our resolutions," said Kulasegaran during the meeting which was open to the media, at Parliament House here.
Also present were Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang, DAP Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng and Ukraine's ambassador to Malaysia, Oleksandr Shevchenko.
Shevchenko said that until Sunday the embassy had yet to receive official information from the authorities regarding the de-recognition of CSMU, adding that they only knew about it through news reports.
"I'm do not quite understand the reason, as based on information I have so far, only 23 Malaysians have graduated from CSMU, so how could they (MMC) make that as a foundation on the quality of the university's medical course," he said at the meeting.
He said that past years evaluation by the Health Ministry's technical team on the 10 Ukraine universities, including CSMU, had shown positive results.
"That's why we intend to get recognition for other universities as well. But I was told this year's evaluation had shown different findings," he said.
The CSMU issue had caused dissatisfaction, mainly in the Indian community, and many had perceived it as an unjust action by the government.