NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet
on Wednesday cleared the health ministry's proposal to institute a
three-year degree programme for public health professionals. The bachelor
in community health programme will act as a bridge between auxiliary
nurse midwife and a doctor and overrides the objections raised by a
parliamentary panel and the Medical Council of India.
The decision will help raise a cadre of public health professionals for rural areas. Sources said the move will help reduce the gap of trained health professionals in rural areas. India has 1 doctor for 1,700 people while the World Health Organization (WHO) mandates a ratio of 1:1000. The rural areas are particularly under-served prompting the health ministry to recommend this new programme.
The course that had the nomenclature of Bachelor of Rural Medicine and Surgery (BRMS) was met with objections from MCI and the medical community.
"This proposal will address concerns raised by the Medical Council of India as these will not be medical professionals. The BSc (community health) programme will give students rudimentary insight into topics like physiology and anatomy without going into elaborate details of a four-and-a-half-year medicine course," a source said.
The course has been hanging fire for long with doctors' associations who protested against it on the ground it would create a two-tier system of doctors with less qualified ones being pushed to rural areas, creating an apartheid of sorts in the health system.
The process of framing the syllabus for the course was taken out of the MCI's ambit and handed over to the National Board of Examinations. The parliamentary panel in March put an end to efforts to push the course through. The panel said instead of creating a new pool of health professional whose mandate and education are grey areas, there should be a compulsory one-year rural posting for fresh medical graduates to meet shortage of doctors in rural areas.
The decision will help raise a cadre of public health professionals for rural areas. Sources said the move will help reduce the gap of trained health professionals in rural areas. India has 1 doctor for 1,700 people while the World Health Organization (WHO) mandates a ratio of 1:1000. The rural areas are particularly under-served prompting the health ministry to recommend this new programme.
The course that had the nomenclature of Bachelor of Rural Medicine and Surgery (BRMS) was met with objections from MCI and the medical community.
"This proposal will address concerns raised by the Medical Council of India as these will not be medical professionals. The BSc (community health) programme will give students rudimentary insight into topics like physiology and anatomy without going into elaborate details of a four-and-a-half-year medicine course," a source said.
The course has been hanging fire for long with doctors' associations who protested against it on the ground it would create a two-tier system of doctors with less qualified ones being pushed to rural areas, creating an apartheid of sorts in the health system.
The process of framing the syllabus for the course was taken out of the MCI's ambit and handed over to the National Board of Examinations. The parliamentary panel in March put an end to efforts to push the course through. The panel said instead of creating a new pool of health professional whose mandate and education are grey areas, there should be a compulsory one-year rural posting for fresh medical graduates to meet shortage of doctors in rural areas.
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