Britain, which is facing an acute shortage of junior doctors, is keen to recruit doctors from India, a traditional supplier of doctors for the National Health Service. However, disagreement between the two ministries is impeding the process.
The vacancies in NHS hospitals have been caused by change in immigration rules, which forced thousands of overseas doctors to return home after 2006, and implementation of European regulations which limit the hours doctors can work.
However, the department of health’s attempt to recruit doctors from India ran into a road block when the home office refused to ease rules to allow junior doctors from India to be recruited to plug the shortage.
Britain’s health ministry had approached the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (Bapio), for help to recruit several hundred junior doctors from India. Bapio agreed to help the UK government but insisted that Indian doctors should be allowed to stay and get training for between three and four years, rather than the two year limit currently in place, according to BBC’s The World At One programme.
“The department of health said its hands are tied. The problem is at the home office. The department of health is very much willing to extend this period, but (they are saying) that the block is at the home office,” Bapio president Ramesh Mehta said.
The organisation refused to help the health ministry in recruiting Indian doctors as it did not get its demands fulfilled.
The Welsh Deanery is one of four medical training schools across the United Kingdom which has been recruiting in India this year, the report said.
Others are in Severn area, the West Midlands and Northern Ireland.