President Pratibha Patil has given her assent to the Ordinance that seeks to extend the tenure of the Board of Governors of the Medical Council of India (MCI) by another year. A gazette notification in this regard was issued on Wednesday. The tenure of the Board was to expire on May 14. The extension was earlier approved at a meeting of the Union Cabinet last month. The Ordinance would have to be...

All doctors, who have an undergraduate medical degree from abroad, will have to appear for a screening test before they can practise in India. This rule will also apply for Indian doctors with post-graduate (PG) medical degrees from the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. Doctors with an UG degree from India and a PG degree from these six countries have been allowed by the Union health ministry to...

This week could see far-reaching beneficial consequences for health care in India. But we need to ensure that the emerging paradigm shift does not miss out on what medical education can and should do to overcome the inadequacies. Recent events in our country have been full of sound and fury, which have disillusioned the public with their futility. But this week has the potential for promising developments in Indian medical education...

The syllabus for the three-year course for rural medical practitioners is ready. It promises to do away with what's "unnecessary" in the four-and-a-half-year MBBS course and prepare "hands-on" doctors at the primary level. The course, called the Bachelor of Rural Health Care (BRHC), is expected to change the landscape of medical education and delivery of health care and hopefully, solve the shortage of doctors in rural areas, home to 70%...

The success of programmes like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) in getting most children enrolled at the primary level has created the illusion that the government is now finally getting down to business and boldly financing education. Spending on education quadrupled between 1990-91 and 2000-01 . Since 2004-05 , the combined expenditure on education by the Centre and states has increased at a blistering...