Bulacan State U welcomes first batch of med scholars
CITY OF MALOLOS—The Bulacan State University (BulSU) will welcome on Monday its first batch of students under its newly opened College of Medicine.
The BulSU College of Medicine (BulSU-COM), under the College of Science at its San Rafael Campus, will initially accommodate 50 students to take up medicine as the 2023-2024 school year begins with 44,000 students entering the university’s gates.
University president Cecilia Gascon, in an interview on Thursday, said the number of BulSU-COM students would eventually increase to a hundred.
The BulSU-COM is offered free under the “Doctor Para sa Bayan Act” or Republic Act No. 11509, which established a medical scholarship and return service program for deserving students.
The law, approved by then President Rodrigo Duterte in December 2020, was authored by Sen. Joel Villanueva after the government realized, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of increasing the number of doctors in the country.
Under the law, each region should have at least one state university or private higher education institution that should offer medicine courses, with tuition and other expenses to be shouldered by the national government.
Prof. Gerald Hilario, executive director of BulSU San Rafael Campus and chair of the BulSU-COM adhoc committee, said in a phone interview on Saturday that 40 doctors would serve as teaching force for the college led by its dean, Dr. Dwight Villacorte.
The Bulacan Medical Center (BMC) will serve as the base hospital of the medical students where they can have their internship.
On Aug. 1, Gov. Daniel Fernando signed a two-year memorandum of agreement with Gascon, BMC director Angelito Trinidad, Hilario and Villacorte for the use of the hospital as internship and medical training institution for BulSU-COM students.
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