Davao City – The Jose Maria College’s (JMC) College of Medicine in this city aims to meet the needs of the Universal Health Care Program in terms of providing medical professionals.
“The Universal Health C
are Law is a game-changing reform of the country’s health system and it needed to be matched by the medical education that has for long didn’t look into primary aspect of health care,” JMC College of Medicine Dean Aurelio Camilo B. Naraval said during the formal launching of the school.
The new college of medicine is the third medical school in Davao City and in Mindanao after Davao Medical School Foundation and Brokenshire College.
Naraval said the new college of medicine will provide a fresh thinking in addressing the common health problems in the community. Our curriculum will respond to this… our medical students even in their first year are already exposed to the public health centers and health facilities,” Dean Naraval said.
Commission on Higher Education chair Prospero de Vera who was the guest in the formal launch held May 18 at the Marco Polo Davao said that the country needs doctors who “have the eye on the ground” that can identify diseases that hit the community.
“One problem in the medical education in the Philippines is that a lot of the universities produce clinicians and experts, we focus on tertiary level, we produce a lot of specialists and the problem is a lot of the diseases in the Philippines have to be advanced before the specialists come in,” De Vera said.
The CHED chair added that the JMC College of Medicine is the first school of medicine approved after the passage of the landmark Universal Health Care Law signed by President Rodrigo Roa Duterte. The law aims to give Filipinos access to affordable and quality healthcare.
The Jose Maria College is founded by Pastor Apollo C. Quiboloy of the Davao City-based Kingdom of Jesus Christ congregation.
“We are pouring out our resources to help one of the major challenges we are facing today, which is the health of our people, that is why we in the private sector are helping our government in our little humble way by establishing this college of medicine,” Quiboloy said.
The College of Medicine campus, located in the JMC compound in Sasa beside the Davao International Airport, boasts of state-of-the-art learning facilities. Manned by 40 faculty members, the college has five classrooms, eight laboratories and two theaters. (PIA)