Fatima Jinnah Dental College

Fatima Jinnah Dental College, commonly referred to by the acronym FJDC, is the oldest dental school in Karachi and one of the oldest in Pakistan. Established in 1992, it is run and managed by a duly registered Fatima Jinnah Dental College & Hospital Trust. It offers students a four-year undergraduate program leading to a degree of Bachelor of Dental Sciences (BDS) in addition to sponsoring graduate students to post-graduate qualification of M.S., M.Phil and Ph.D.The College is affiliated with the University of Karachi and is recognized by the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC). It is also recognised for post-graduation by College of Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan. The college is named after Fatima Jinnah, sister of the founder of the nation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who was herself a dentist, and to pay homage to the services she offered to the country.HistoryFJDC was established against the backdrop of a disastrous dental scenario in 1992, during which the dentist-to-population ratio of 1 dentist to nearly 85,000 people was one of the lowest in the world. In 1993, there were just over 1,200 registered dentists in Pakistan compared to 70,000 medical doctors, serving a population of well over 100 million.Therefore, in 1989, Baqar Askary, then the President of the Dow Medical College Students' Union and President National Students Federation, launched a campaign for the establishment of a dental college to serve the over 12 million people of Karachi. The aim initially was to persuade the Federal Government and the Provincial Government of Sindh to establish a dental college attached to one of the existing medical colleges in the city, specifically either the Jinnah Post-Graduate Medical Centre, Sindh Medical College, Dow Medical College, or Civil Hospital as dental departments already existed in these institutions.