15 March 2010
By Teena Thacker
New Delhi, India
What is in the course
Anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, forensic medicine, medicine and allied disciplines, paediatrics, orthopaedics, obstetrics and gynaecology, community medicine and family medicine.
FACING objections from the medical fraternity over the proposed Bachelor of Rural Medicine and Surgery course for rural areas, the Medical Council of India (MCI) has now reworked the proposal to restrict the course to `general medication' and renamed it as `Bachelor of Rural HealthCare'.Thecasesthatneedsurgery will be referred to big hospitals, suggests the new proposal.
The changes in the proposal have been made based on the recommendations made during a two-day workshop held last month to discuss the rural model of undergraduate medical education.
The MCI's executive committee has also proposed to extend the course tenure from three-and-a-half years to four years, inclusive of six months rotating internship. "It would be institutional in character conducted through medical schools which would be tagged with public district hospitals in the districts where there are no medical colleges as of now," says the proposal.
As per the proposal, every medical school would be affiliated to an examining university which would confer the Bachelor of Rural Health Care degree.
Admissions would be `district-based' and either 25 or 50 students per district would be enrolled every year. The applicant, as per the proposal, should be 17year-old on or before December 31 of year of admission, and should have completed his/her entire schooling with Physics, Chemistry, Biology and English as subjects from a notified rural area.
"The students will not have to sit for a medical entrance examination, instead they will be selected from primary health centres on the basis of marks obtained in Class XII with Physics, Chemistry and Biology as main subjects," said Dr Ketan Desai, president, MCI. "Weightage will be given to those who have studied in village schools," he added.
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