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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Longer course proposal for MBBS

Longer course proposal for MBBS

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published Published on May 21, 2012   modified Modified on May 21, 2012
-The Telegraph

Undergraduate medical students across India may need to spend more time in rural areas under a proposal being examined by the Medical Council of India that may extend the duration of the five- and-a-half-year MBBS course.

The Medical Council of India (MCI) in consultation with the Union health ministry is examining the proposal to add several months to the current three-month rural training which is mandatory during MBBS internship, said K.K. Talwar, the chairman of the MCI board.

Talwar told The Telegraph that the MCI had asked a panel of experts to determine how students could be “mentored, monitored, and supervised” during these additional months while they are attached to government health centres.

He said the exact additional period students would have to spend in rural health centres is yet to be determined but it could be anything between six months to a year.

“This is intended to be part of their training programme —it’s important to give MBBS students a feel of the (rural) country,” Talwar said.

The panel of experts examining the proposal is likely to issue its recommendations within a few weeks, he said.

Another member of the MCI board said the additional rural training and the increase in the duration of internship is a “possible avenue to improve rural health care” under exploration, but “still at a primitive stage of discussions”.

Senior members of the medical education sector believe the proposal is likely to encounter some opposition from sections of medical colleges, particularly private colleges, that may not wish to extend the duration of the MBBS course.

Some are already dubbing the proposal a “gimmick” that won’t make any significant difference to health care in rural areas. “All this will achieve is it will get raw and usually reluctant students to spend more of token time in rural areas,” said Kunchala Shyamprasad, a cardio-thoracic surgeon and a former member of a Union health ministry task force on medical education.

“Instead, the MCI and the government should speed up the already-approved proposal to introduce an alternative undergraduate course to create a cadre of rural health providers, available exclusively to rural residents,” Shyamprasad said.

The health ministry has already expressed its support for a three-year course leading to an alternative medical education programme, whose graduates are expected to be more willing to serve in rural areas than MBBS graduates.

Under the existing MBBS course requirements, students have to complete a year of rotatory internship after four-and-a-half years of college study, and three months of this year are spent in community medicine, often involving a posting in rural health centres.

The Union health ministry had a few years ago introduced incentives to MBBS graduates to work in rural areas, offering 10 points in the entrance exams for postgraduate medical courses for each year spent in a rural area.

But the health ministry has said no one has responded to these incentives.

The Telegraph, 21 May, 2012, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120521/jsp/nation/story_15513000.jsp#.T7m62lIjy9s


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