MBBS will be of six-and-a-half years

The Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry has approved the proposal for compulsory rural posting for doctors. One year posting in rural and inaccessible areas will now be made part of the curriculum.

Once approved by the Medical Council of India (MCI), this would mean that the MBBS course would now be of six and a half years instead of the present five and a half years.

The proposal requires an amendment to the MCI Act that needs to be approved by Parliament. The new curriculum will be applicable from the 2008-09 academic year, after being passed by Parliament.

Applicable to all medical colleges

According to Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss, the proposal, if approved, will be applicable to both the government and private medical colleges.

India churns out 29,500 medical graduates annually but even then there are few healthcare facilities in the rural and far-flung areas.

The one-year rural posting will include serving at the district headquarters for four months, community health centres for another four months and the primary health centres for the remaining four months.

The doctors will be given a monthly stipend of Rs. 8,000 to Rs. 10,000 as an incentive to work in these areas, Dr. Ramadoss said.

They will be based at the district headquarters and will serve under the District Health Officer.

Earlier there was a proposal to make rural postings compulsory after the MBBS course and a doctor will have to serve in the rural areas for at least one year before he applied for a post-graduation course.

However, this proposal was dropped.

The proposal was mooted keeping in mind the poor healthcare facilities in the rural areas, particularly the shortage of doctors as even the government doctors are reluctant to serve in these regions and would rather join the private sector for better salaries and an urban posting.

Update:
The Health ministry has agreed to revise its decision in view of opposition from students all over INDIA.
(Source)

Medicos oppose Rural posting

Medical teachers and students in the state have strongly opposed a move by Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss to extend the five-and-a-half-year MBBS course by a year, with the last year as mandatory rural posting. They have said that the move will be counter-productive since fresh medical graduates will not be able to deliver the desired results.
“A fresh MBBS graduate is too inexperienced to handle crisis situations in a rural set-up, which will be unfair to the rural population,’’ a senior professor said.
Ramadoss is considering extending the course following recommendations by the National Rural Health Mission. A month ago, he had set up a high-level committee headed by additional director general of health services R Samba Siva Rao to ascertain the views of undergraduate and post-graduate teachers, medical teachers, parents and associated groups before implementation of the rural posting for medical graduates.
Accordingly Rao, on Wednesday, held a marathon meeting with medical teachers and students from 42 medical colleges across the state, senior officials of the medical education department and the directorate of medical education and research at JJ Hospital. Rao explained the proposal and said, “Our rural health care system is weak and we want it to strengthen in a time-bound period. Hence Ramadoss, on the recommendation of the rural health mission, has mooted the new concept.’’
However, medical teachers opposed the move and also raised the following objections. Students who want to continue post-graduate studies will be affected as a gap of one year in a non-academic environment will have an adverse effect on their studies.
The course is already long and adding a year is unfair. Making it compulsory with a meagre pay or stipend amounts to exploitation. It is likely that if this scheme is implemented, the number of posts in rural areas may be insufficient to accommodate all the graduates. In its report, NHRM has said that public health centres across India are poorly managed owing to acute shortage of manpower. In Maharashtra, out of the 6,000 public health centres, there are no doctors at at least 1,600 centres, while at 2,000 centres, the medical officers are appointed on adhoc basis for 11 months.
(Source)