Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) has launched an interactive online portal to facilitate doctors across the country. According to a PMDC official, the Council started its registration portal as a priority after making all necessary arrangements for the transition from the PMC (Pakistan Medical Commission) to the PMDC. “We invite all the local graduates, who are approximately over 10,000 and waiting for their permanent registration for long, to apply online for registration,” he said. “These graduates”, he added, “waited for quite a long time to get themselves registered but failed due to the rigid rules imposed by the past PMC.” He said on the first day, 1,500 registration certificates were been issued while the PMDC also started issuing good-standing certificates and renewals. The official said the Council continued issuing permanent registration certificates to the Pakistani doctors, without the requirement of the National Licensing Examination (NLE). This exam was mandatory earlier as per the previous law of PMC, the local graduates had to appear and pass the NLE exam before getting their permanent registration, even after graduation from Pakistani medical and dental colleges, he added. In that regard, he said, several protests and demonstrations were held by different doctor forums and organizations at different levels and the past government was appealed repeatedly to withdraw the said black law. Previously, as per the PMC law, the NLE was taken by the doctors who had graduated from Pakistan’s approved medical and dental colleges which was highly criticized by the doctors’ community throughout the country. He said keeping in view the demand of the doctors and on the direction of the Minister for National Health Services Abdul Qadir Patel, the step was taken after signing the legislation concerned by President Dr Arif Alvi. He said one of the objectives of PMDC was to make the registration portal in a way that was seamless to use, easy to navigate, and user-friendly. He added that the PMDC right after promulgation of its ordinance, ensured that the registration portal should be accurate enough and must be able to secure the storage of confidential information of doctors and to develop a system that provided a secure payment system for application fees and develop a system for tracking and managing applications.