New medical school ready in 2018

PLANS for Panama’s new  Medical Faculty will be delivered on Monday, January 11, and the $70 million school is intended to be up and running by the end of 2018.

After  a three year  study of  regional medical schools and US  universities, the functional plan  for the for the preparation of the specifications for the tender for the design and construction of   the  faculty will be delivered to The Ministry of Health (MoH)

Thomas Sosa, consulting architect said  “It is  a functional architecture program very detailed for better design, which provides space per square meter, equipment needs , number of people who will occupy each area and type of technical requirements that each space will require.” explained .

The facilities will be built in an area of ​​46, 584 square meters, four times more than the current faculty’s  11, 600 square meters.

The $70 million required for the construction and equipment of the school will be supplied by the MoH. Enrique Mendoza, dean of the UP  Faculty of Medicine, said they intend to implement the public event in April and  it must be built and operating not later than the end of 2018.

The authority was created in 1951 for 200 aspiring physicians, but after  20 years began to train medical technologists and public health.

For a decade  it has prepared nutritionists,  medical emergency technicians, radiologists and occupational health experts. That is nearly 2,000 students working in facilities with multiple problems.

The Association of Medical Students says  that there are rooms in which walls leak, the floors are damaged  and equipment is  missing in the laboratories.

Domingo Moreno, member of the National Negotiating Medical Commission, (Comenenal) said that currently “there is  good intention to bring to reality the construction of the Faculty of Medicine, that the country needs.  He criticized the project location because it is out of town and without means of transportation to make the area accessible.

The former director of Health Guillermo Moreno Rolla called the new faculty an urgent necessity.

He recalled talk of building facilities for training doctors over 50 years ago and said  that the country is not only facing shortages of equipment and medications, but nurses, nutritionists, technologists and specialists.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says that there should be 25 doctors and nurses per 10,000 inhabitants. In Panama  it is 29.2 per 10,000, but distribution is unequal.