The Medical Council of India is set to extend the duration of the MBBS course by a year. One year’s rural postings for doctors has also been made compulsory by the ministry. The MBBS course will now be for six-and-a-half instead of five-and-a-half years.
The proposal to extend the duration of the MBBS course by a year and a year of compulsory rural posting was unanimously approved in a meeting held on Saturday by Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. The MCI has been asked to work on the issue as this will require an amendment in the regulation “The Minimum Standard Requirement, 1999”. Speaking to this newspaper, a senior health ministry official said: “Under the regulation the duration of internship is for one year, which includes three months’ posting in rural areas and nine months in a hospital attached to a medical college.”
It was learnt that the proposal will now be placed before the board of governors of the MCI and will then be sent to the Centre for approval. Shortage of doctors and poor health services were apparently the reasons why it is being made compulsory for doctors to serve a year in rural areas.
However, a section of doctors feel the decision “will lead to an addition of one year in the training programme before getting the MBBS degree”. A doctor pointed out that “the course was already of five-and-a-half for MBBS, three years for post-graduation and then three more years for doing super-speciality courses”. He said under the existing system the total “duration comes to nearly 11-and-a-half years”.
It may be recalled that following a string of protests the proposal of the then health minister, Dr Anbumani Ramadoss, to extend the MBBS course and make rural postings compulsory for a year had to be withdrawn. Dr Ramadoss had tried to make rural duty compulsory for graduates. However, rapid deterioration of health services in rural areas and graduates trying to stay on in urban areas made the government take a re-look at the entire proposal again.