PG medical education is in a mess
Status Report On Unrecognised Courses In Colleges Submitted In Court …Prafulla Marpakwar I TNN
Mumbai: When even government-run medical colleges conduct courses that are nonrecognised and de-recognised, there is something very wrong with the state of medical education.
In Maharashtra, post-graduate medical education is in a mess. The hardest hit are the students, who are not considered for any assignment out of Maharashtra or abroad.
The statistics tell the story: 10 government medical colleges teach 75 non-recognised and nine de-recognised courses; 39 post-graduate and 24 diploma courses taught in Mumbai, Pune, Solapur, Miraj, Nagpur, Aurangabad and Ambejogai, which were started before 1992, have not been recognised; 11 degree courses and one diploma course at Yeotmal and Nanded, also started before 1992 are still pending recognition.
A status report on the lack of recognition and ensuing confusion in government medical colleges was submitted before the Bombay high court on March 18, in response to a petition filed by Dr Shahriawaz Siddiqui. The high court had earlier directed Amitabh Chandra, principal secretary (medical education), Mrudula Phadke, vicechancellor, Maharashtra University of Health Sciences and A R N Setalwad, secretary, Medical Council of India (MCI) to meet and submit a statement on the status of the courses in these colleges.
The date 1992 is significant because the Maharashtra government had reportedly urged the MCI to grant one-time recognition to all post-graduate courses started in or before 1992. This, the government felt, would not be untoward because the colleges had not violated any of the MCI rules. Secondly, it asked the MCI to grant provisional recognition to all these degrees for a period of one to two years. According to reports, the MCI rejected the plea. It was then decided that all the concerned institutions would submit applications for recognition according to the MCI Act before March 31, 2008.
What is being viewed as an even more serious lapse is that most of the medical colleges did not ever bother to apply to the MCI for course recognition. Take the case of Indira Gandhi Medical College in Nagpur. Six diploma courses and 14 PG courses offered by it are not recognised, neither has it applied for recognition. The same story is played out in the VM Medical college, Solapur, TN Medical College, Mumbai, the Government Medical College in Miraj, Aurangabad, Ambajogai, Yeotmal, Nagpur and Grant Medical College, Mumbai.