OPINION – A Shameful Disaster

How can we aspire to become a developed country, modifying laws and decrees to deliberately be an underdeveloped country? The Inter-Institutional Council for Basic Certification in Medicine and a couple of unpresentable deputies maintain their initiatives – a resolution and a bill, respectively – to lower the necessary qualification in order to verify the minimum knowledge to practice medicine in Panama. The council has not repealed its shameful resolution and the deputies continue to lower their grades and postpone the test through an amendment to the law in force since 2004. The damage of these absurd initiatives has seriously harmful effects on the suitability of doctors and will definitely harm its academic image, both in Panama and in the rest of the world. Their diagnoses will be the subject of doubts and their decisions in the field of medicine will be questioned. This is what awaits the new doctors, in the current scenario. And that is a complete injustice to those who do make an effort: to carry the mediocre image of their colleagues. This is a disaster, promoted by equally mediocre officials.- LA PRENSA, Mar. 13