By Sade Adewale, Ondo

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The Vice Chancellor of University of Medical Sciences UNIMED, Ondo, Prof. Adesegun Fatusi has explained why the institution was not on the list of the 37 medical schools that received full accreditation of Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, MDCN.

The VC gave the explanation in a release that was made available to The Hope by the Head of Public Relations Unit of the University, Mr Temitope Oluwatayo.

The release read: “The attention of the management of the University of Medical Sciences (UNIMED) Ondo, has been drawn to a publication in a national newspaper stating that only 37 of 44 medical schools have received full Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) accreditation.

“We deemed it fit to clarify the situation as the publication demonstrated poor understanding of accreditation processes, particularly of medical programmes, and capable of giving the wrong impression that UNIMED is running an unaccredited programme, thereby generating concerns among students, parents, and other stakeholders of the university, and the general public.

“As a rule, university programmes are not accredited at the time of initiation. Rather, the first step is resource verification by the National Universities Commission, after which the institution is approved to start the programme based on the result of the assessment conducted.

“Accreditation takes place at a later stage before the school graduates its first set, usually in year three or four of a programme. For Medicine specifically, both the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Medical and Dental Council (MDCN) are required to independently accredit a new programme.

“Due to the intricacies of medical training, the MDCN accreditation is sequential, stage-by-stage, and not a one-off process. Once an institution is authorized to start the programme, as is true of UNIMED, MDCN undertakes accreditation process over a number of years, with visiting of teams at intervals.

“Once this stage is completed, and if the institution succeeds, then accreditation is a five-year affair.UNIMED has successfully scaled through all due accreditations stages of MDCN required for year one to year five of the medical training programme, in tandem with the stage of progression of our first set of students.

“Our training programme is fully accredited by NUC, and the University is currently preparing for the last of the sequential accreditations, which is the final accreditation, with the students now in their final year.

“Thus, on the whole, UNIMED is fully on course in terms of the accreditation processes for Medicine, with the full assurance that we will successfully scale the final accreditation that will be conducted within the next few months, and graduate the first set of doctors this year (2022), just as we successfully completed the first set of nurotherapists in 2021.

“We hereby assure all our stakeholders and the general public of the commitment of the university authority to continue to strive towards excellence in line with its vision and mission.