Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Great move by SC to reform MCI' that was published in Newsband

Great move by SC to reform MCI

The Supreme Court has set up a three-member committee headed by former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha to perform the statutory functions of the Medical Council of India. The government now has a year to restructure the MCI, the regulatory body for medical education and professional practice. The Centre’s approach to reforming the corruption-afflicted MCI has been wholly untenable.

Among the most important is the need to reduce the cost of medical education and increase access in different parts of the country. This must be done to improve the doctor-to-population ratio, which is one for every 1,674 persons, as per the parliamentary panel report, against the WHO-recommended one to 1,000.

The single most important issue that the Lodha committee would have to address is corruption in medical education, in which the MCI is mired.

Now in MBBS course, the candidates do not pay attention to hospital training. More specifically, during internship also they do not learn any clinical art. They are busy in mugging the texts to qualify the PG seat. In this situation we are producing untrained doctors in 6 years which is a serious issue. In earlier days even a MBBS was full of clinical skills which is not seen today even after too much inputs of modern technology. This needs to be addressed during MCI reforms.

There are professional colleges in the country run by politician and mafia in most of the cases. Why they would like the change and uniform system in the admission where they receive huge amounts under the table? Most of such institution do not provide basic amenities to the students i.e. Lab and library facilities, teaching faculty, thus question of quality education does not arise at all. Medical council is wholly responsible for all these along with connivance of politician and bureaucrats. We should not compromise with Health and Education in the country, the result we will see after couple of decades. So be foresighted for the country. Make the policy to produce quality professional.

 There should be a ban on the politicians opening the medical and engineering colleges who loot the poor students. Unfortunately the private colleges give bribe to open their institutions and most of the institutions do not have the required strength of instructors and they insist that the students make use of the library to study and pass the examinations.

Since the medical education is expensive, the medical service by doctors has become exorbitant. The committee should find out ways to reduce the cost of medical education so that people can afford to avail medical services.

There is a brain drain in the field of medical profession. Most of the top educated medicos migrate to other countries in search of better prospects. If such prospects could be offered within India we are sure we can retain those talents. The committee should find out the methods and means to achieve this retention.
(Visit Dinesh Kamath's Blog: dkamath.blogspot.in)