Central government’s decision to introduce a shortened medical course at the graduate level for serving rural areas only has not gone down well with the Indian Medical Association (IMA). IMA’s central council passed a resolution against this programme in its meet in Hyderabad in December. “We are averse to the idea of creating a shortcut to medicine,” said Dr Dharam Prakash secretary general, Indian Medical Association, New Delhi. “They will be like half-baked doctors,” he added.
Ministry of Health and Family welfare recently approved Medical Council of India’s (MCI) proposal for four year Bachelor in Rural Healthcare course. This course was aimed at meeting the public health challenges in rural areas. The condensed course aims to produce 1.45 lakh rural doctors.
“Even though the idea is very noble as something is better than nothing, but this will be discriminatory for rural population as urban areas will have fully qualified MBBS doctors whereas rural areas will have half-trained doctors. Also how can one restrict doctors to rural areas?” said Dr Hozie Kapadia secretary of IMA.
Dr Mrudula Phadke, former Vice-Chancellor of Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, Nashik, has also expressed reservations about the course earlier this week.
MCI proposed setting up of 300 medical colleges to provide education to rural students and deploy them to provide basic healthcare facilities to villagers. These medical colleges will provide a course in Bachelors in Rural Healthcare. After being trained, the graduate doctors will be posted in notified rural areas. “Instead of building new medical colleges, upgrade the existing infrastructure. Also increase the salary of freshers willing to go to rural areas to attract and sustain them for rural stint,” said Dr Kapadia. “This is a knee jerk reaction. Twenty years back also the government had proposed a three-year course to have ‘barefoot doctors’ for villages but it did not take off,” said surgeon Dr Shivkumar Utture.
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