Parliamentary panel rejects shorter medical degree plan for rural health-Vidya Krishnan

-Live Mint

Health ministry’s plan for a shorter medical degree course is aimed at addressing manpower shortage in rural healthcare

A parliamentary committee on Tuesday rejected the health ministry’s plan to introduce a shorter medical degree course aimed at addressing manpower shortages in rural healthcare.

It said the proposed Bachelor in Rural Healthcare course would legitimize differences in the quality of medical treatment in rural and urban settings.

 

“We discussed the issue at length and it was unanimously decided to turn down the proposal,” said Sanjay Jaiswal, member of the parliamentary committee on health. “This course would essentially institutionalize the difference in quality of doctors. The lesser trained doctors would be treating in our villages while the better qualified ones would stay in urban areas. Indian citizens cannot get two types of medical treatment.”

 

The panel on health, headed by Brajesh Pathak, instead recommended a compulsory one-year rural posting for medical graduates to address healthcare needs in rural areas.

 

The health ministry had proposed the shorter course to address the shortage of doctors in rural India. Those graduating from the course were to be posted as community health officers at primary healthcare centres and district hospitals in semi-urban and rural areas.

Experts said the panel’s decision could have an adverse impact on the crumbling public health infrastructure.

“We have a dire shortage of qualified health professionals including doctors, nurses and para-medical professionals. Doctors alone cannot solve India’s health problems,” said Kavita Narayan, who headed allied health services study commissioned by the health ministry.

“We need to quickly introduce legitimate, skilled, low-level providers into the system. Right now, we have a million plus unregistered professionals–dais and quacks–who can be given formal training within a well-regulated system to produce allied health professionals who will stay in villages. Students who finish the five-year MBBS course do not stay in the villages, so adding more seats will not solve the problem of rural healthcare,” she added.

The parliamentary report states “that a very substantial portion of primary healthcare is provided by untrained providers and often by quacks and there is acute shortage of healthcare professionals in rural areas. The committee would, therefore, like the ministry to devote its energies towards devising new strategies to overcome this gigantic problem”.

Health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had recently stated in Parliament that the proposed course was likely to be introduced in the states willing to adopt it from the 2013-14 academic year.

Besides increasing the number of doctors, the parliamentary panel added that more nursing graduates should be posted in sub-centres and nursing school enrollments should rise.