SMU (Sindh Medical University) Alumni

roup of students, numbering about two hundred, was admitted to its first year MBBS class in the College for the 1972-73 session, with the late Professor Dr. Khawaja Moin Ahmd as its Project Director and First Principal. In the beginning the College operated in a building of the paediatrics ward of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre. This building was actually an army barracks constructed in the year 1865 and transferred to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre in 1959. In the beginning, there were three departments: anatomy (including histology), physiology, and biochemistry. In later years, a new academic block was constructed to house the departments of pathology, pharmacology, forensic medicine, and community medicine. This complex was equipped with modern audiovisual technology. It also housed new laboratories and museums, as well as administrative offices. The old barracks has been renovated to house a new faculty of SMC, under the name of Dr. Ishrat ul Ebad Khan Institute of Oral Health Sciences. The Sindh Medical College campus now houses a complete dental hospital and school of dental medicine plus post graduate institute. Since the foundation of the College in 1973, a boys' hostel has been organized and a building for a girls' hostel has been purchased by the PECHS. The college is completely associated with the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, the National Institute of Child Health, and the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases. In 2003, SMC became a part of the Dow University of Health Sciences. It shares curriculum, faculty, and other resources with the other affiliated institutions of DUHS, namely DMC (Dow Medical College) and DIMC (Dow International Medical College). The former head of the physiology department at SMC is now the dean of DIMC. In earlier years after it started functioning, the then president of Pakistan, Gen Zia ul Haq visited SMC and promised to upgrade it to a university. In recent years, the demand to grant SMC the status of a university was made anew by the Sindh Medical College Alumni Association. As of December 2010, president Asif Ali Zardari has issued verbal orders to upgrade SMC to a university, but the college had to await another 2 years to see it happening. The Annual Alumni Winter Meeting in December 2010 claimed that the college has so far produced over ten thousand doctors serving all across the globe, with about two thousand serving as licensed clinicians in North America. SMU (Formally SMC) admits a total of three hundred and fifty new national and international admissions for the degree "Bachelors in Medicine, Bachelors of Surgery (MBBS)" every year, with the admission criterion taking into account the applicant's score at the aptitude test and past academic record. We hope that the intake / capacity to take students will increase in forthcoming years.