Medical doctors, students and unions have been demonstrating against a Sri Lanka Health Ministry decision to allow students from a new private medical college to receive clinical training at government hospitals, which could pave the way for more private institutions to benefit from the public health system. On one occasion last week the protests turned violent. The ministry’s decision came after a group of students at Malabe Private Medical College, situated in a suburb of the capital Colombo, filed a fundamental rights petition in the Supreme Court asking for clinical training at government hospitals from which they had previously been barred due to heavy pressure from state university students unions. Students unions, along with doctors, public university lecturers and trade unions called on the government to close down the private college and stop higher education privatisation, and took to the streets in a number of protests. On 21 October, more than 5,000 students from universities all over the country launched a massive protest march. The students, wielding placards and shouting slogans, tried to reach the parliamentary complex in the capital, considered a high security zone. However, anti-riot police fired tear gas and used water cannons to stop the march before it reached parliament, resulting in 12 students being hospitalised, two of them with broken legs. The previous week, on 13 October, the doctors' trade union held a protest march and demanded that the government take over the private college. Private vs public facilities The South Asia Institute of Technology and Medicine or SAITM – commonly known as Malabe Private Medical College – is a branch of a Russian university, conferring Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy degrees. It recently established a 1002-bed private teaching hospital for student clinical training – currently the first private teaching hospital and the largest private hospital in Sri Lanka. President of the Ceylon Teachers’ Union, Joseph Stalin, said SAITM had