Regional Conference on Health Professions Education

(Dhaka, 23-24 October 2008)

“We need to have a holistic and balanced approach to health workforce education and give more attention to ensuring quality of medical education, especially in the rapidly growing private sector”. Mr A M M Nasir Uddin, Secretary, MOHFW emphasized that in his speech as chief guest in the inaugural session of the Regional Conference on Health Profession Education organized by Association for Medical Education (AME), with the theme “promoting health through health professions education”. The inaugural session was organized on 23 October. at Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons (BCPS) Auditorium. It was presided over by Professor Md Saleh Uddin, President, AME, and attended by Prof. M A Faiz, Director General of Health Services, Prof. Mobin Khan, President BCPS and Dr. Duangvadee Sungkhobol, World Health Organization (WHO) Representative to Bangladesh, as Special Guests.

Stressing on the crucial need of introducing modern methods and technology in health professionals’ education, including the scaling up of the quality assurance initiative, the Director General of Health Services, Prof. M A Faiz, in his speech highlighted importance of organizing this conference, as a unique opportunity for reflection and framing the way forward.

Dr. Duangvadee Sungkhobol, the WHO Representative to Bangladesh, while addressing the audience, expressed her appreciation for extending the scope of the conference to include in addition to medical education, nursing and allied health professionals education. She also expressed her optimism that the discussions in different sessions would generate ideas and put forward recommendations towards achieving optimal skill mix which would enable the health workforce to contribute effectively to the achievement of the country health goals. She reiterated the commitment of WHO to support the related national authorities in addressing the priority human resources issues, in collaboration with the key stakeholders, including professional bodies and associations.

WHO Bangladesh has a long history of collaboration with members of the AME, mainly through the Centre for Medical Education, which had included the implementation of WHO supported activities for updating training curricula for pre-service and in-service training of medical, nursing and allied health workforce as well as in implementing training on effective teaching and assessment methods.