Department of Pharmacy, Pune

The Department of Pharmacy at Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC) in Pune is comparatively a new addition to the college, which was incepted in the year 2018. Nestled in Wanowrie, Pune, this department is a part of the much more extensive and/or inclusive AFMC campus, which has a total area of 181 acres.

It is an affiliated college to the Armed Forces Medical College, providing specialised education in the field of pharmacy among the students of pharmacy. PCI and AICTE accredit all its programmes which ensure that the department meets the national standards.

The department has a total enrolment capacity of 1,149 students and offers a faculty strength of 8 members that give personalised learning to the students of pharmacy. As for facilities, the Department of Pharmacy at AFMC has a collection of facilities that can afford fully rounded pharmaceutical education.

The pharmaceutics lab is also equipped with modern instruments as prescribed by the Pharmacy Council of India, such as tablet dissolution test apparatus, granulating sieves, friability testers, and autoclave machines. This all helps to put the students through the pharmaceutical formulation and analysis processes.

The department also includes IT facilities and resources that include a computer laboratory with twenty networked systems for language and communication development software purposes. These two elements of the students’ curricular training equip them for technical and interpersonal challenges inherent in the pharmaceutical employment setting.

Also, students can use a library and sports equipment, which impacts a holistic approach to work. The Department of Pharmacy at AFMC offers one primary course: the Diploma in Pharmacy (D. Pharma). Offered full-time, this programme takes two years to complete, and the approved annual student enrolment for each batch is sixty. The D.

Pharma course curriculum is aimed at ensuring the student possesses adequate understanding of matters pharmaceuticals and making them fit to practice in the health sector’s many specialties. At the moment the facility offers only this diploma programme but its connection with the Armed Forces Medical College can encourage expansion and development of higher-level courses in pharmacy in future years.

Therefore, the basic requirement is to have good grades in the science subjects at the 10+2 levels. It can thus be expected that competition will arise again for admission into the Department of Pharmacy at AFMC since it is affiliated with the Armed Forces Medical College.

This may be due to military affiliation, where the admission process may have a different set of criteria or even physical fitness or willingness to join the military on completion of the programme. Thus, with its beginnings marking just a decade ago, the Department of Pharmacy at AFMC is an institution on the cusp of ascendance to the major league of pharmaceutical education.