PETALING JAYA: Since about 30% of registered specialists in the country come from the parallel pathway programme, the Malaysian Medical Council must recognise the role it has played in increasing the number of specialists, says former health minister Tan Sri Dr S. Subramaniam Master’s programme was started by Universiti Malaya in 1973 and subsequently other public universities started their own programmes. At present, there are more than 20 Master’s programmes conducted by local universities.
“Over time, the qualifications provided by the Royal Colleges came to be known as the parallel pathway,” said Dr Subramaniam, who served as health minister from 2013 to 2018. “Among the reasons given was that the parallel pathway programme did not fulfil the legal requirements of the Medical Act,” he said.“To address this, there was an initiative by the Deans Council to create a National Postgraduate Curriculum to standardise the training under the two programmes.