Andhra Pradesh: MBBS students to get free tablets

Vishakhapatnam: Tablets containing various departmental lectures have been distributed among medical students of various government medical colleges of the state. Distribution of these tablets began with Guntur on Thursday. The idea behind this distribution is also to make medical students familiar with the latest technology. 7200 government medical students are to receive these educational tablets in the coming days. The Datamini manufactured tablets, costing Rs. 9000, can be retained by the students, even after passing out.

A 100 tablets were distributed in Guntur at a program organised for the purpose. Medical students of Siddhartha Medical College, SIMS Tirupati and Siddhartha Medical College were recipients of these gifted tablets.

Health Minister, Dr Kamineni Srinivas, Principal Health Secretary, Poonam Malakondaiah, Director of Medical Education, Dr Subba Rao, Vice-Chancellor of NTR Health University, Dr T Ravi Raju, Registrar, Principals of all Government Medical Colleges were present.

Dr Jayshree Mehta, President of Medical Council of India speaking on the occasion praised the state of Andhra Pradesh for being ‘the first’ in many of its initiatives, some of which had been followed suit in many other states.

A few of the ‘first’ initiatives by the state of Andhra Pradesh include: free access to journals to students by NTR Health University, online correction of answer scripts, online medical entrance exam and distribution of tablets.

The Vice Chancellor reminded the students to treat the tablets as a complementary to classroom lectures and not as substitute for library and classroom teaching.

Elaborating on Tablet distribution, Dr PV Sudhakar, Principal , Andhra Medical College, told the TOI, "For 600 undergraduate students of Andhra Medical College too, indent has been placed and the tablets are expected to arrive soon and likely to be distributed by the middle of this month. Besides, the heads of all the departments and principals of the government medical colleges would also be given a tablet each so that they can oversee what the students are learning. A total of 1,250 hours of lectures have been loaded in the tablets,.”