Two dozen
recently graduated Cambodian specialised doctors who obtained their degrees
abroad are contesting the Ministry of Health’s decision to bar them from
working as full-time government employees on the grounds that their degrees are
not equivalent to domestic medical degrees.
Sreng
Houng, who said he received his ophthalmologist degree in Vietnam, yesterday
asked Prime Minister Hun Sen on his Facebook page to intervene. In his post,
Houng said the 24 students had received scholarships from the Ministry of
Education 10 years ago to pursue medical degrees in various countries, such as
Vietnam, China, Malaysia and the US, and had obtained specialisations including
gynaecology, oncology and surgery.
“We are
very . . . disappointed,” he said. “We have struggled and have overcome many
tests . . . and we have spent 10 years of studies.”
Hun Sen
replied to Houng’s post by saying he had forwarded the request to Health
Minister Mam Bunheng for review, but hours later, the response was deleted.
While the
students were educated abroad, the quality of Cambodian-trained health
professionals is very much a subject of debate, and Cambodian doctors’ skills
and ethics have come under repeated fire in recent months.
Cambodian-American
doctor Mengly Quach – himself a vocal critic of the Kingdom’s health-care
sector – yesterday questioned why the government would have sent the students
abroad if it wouldn’t later accept their degrees. While he acknowledged that
testing applicants’ abilities was important, he also noted that Cambodia has an
“extreme shortage of health providers”.
Chheng
Kannarath, deputy secretary-general at the Medical Council of Cambodia, said
Cambodian students who graduate overseas are required to submit a diploma to
the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Health to assess its equivalency.
Health
Minister Bunheng didn’t respond to requests for comment as to whether the
applicants’ degrees had been assessed, and ministry spokesman Ly Sovann would
only say that the ministry “recruits all health professionals who fulfil the
degree because health is a business that needs real skills”.
Houng
claims the ministry on August 1 said their degrees were not equivalent because
they had not been educated based on the French system.
Mengly,
however, said it would be “very out of line” if students had been told that
because medical education is a “universal language”.
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