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1. Smiti S Says:
   April 28th, 2010 at 12:25 am

   IS THE TIME UP FOR MCI?
   With the recent arrest of Medical Council of India (MCI) chief, Dr. Ketan Desai by CBI for allegedly accepting bribe for giving recognition to a private medical college in Punjab , history is repeating itself once again. Its amazing to know that a person who was asked to step down as MCI chief in 2001 by Delhi high court on charges of corruption and irregularities in MCI was re-elected as MCI chief again in March 2009. This can happen only in our country where corruption is rampant at such a high level routinely and the culprit walks off scot free. It clearly shows a nexus between the MCI , Private medical colleges and Politicians who either have a high stake in many of these colleges or own them. Things have become real murky and a stage has come now that whole system has become so rotten that it is only a matter of time before it disintegrates itself.
   In his capacity as MCI chief, Ketan Desai recently brought about some changes for reducing corruption by abolishing the practice of acceptance of gift to the doctors by pharmaceutical companies. There is a reason for this also. Corporate hospitals or the so called health care and service industry offer packages, incentives etc to the patients and in turn ask pharmaceutical companies to provide things at a discounted rate . As a result of this both the hospital as well as the pharmaceutical company earn huge profits at the cost of the doctors who prescribes medicines and does surgeries. The giving of gifts by companies t in order to get prescriptions is an age old practice with companies sponsoring the doctors for attending a medical conference, providing membership of an organization or arranging for fellowships. It does help the doctor in updating his knowledge. Needless to say , an Indian doctor who charges a fees of around 3-4 dollars per patient unlike his western counterpart can ever attend a medical conference in western countries ,the expense of which will amount to no less than 5000 US dollars. Putting a ban on this practice will only add to further malpractice . He has also written to pharmaceutical companies asking them to explain why they sponsored foreign trips for scores of doctors and threatened to withdraw license of doctors who accepted such favours. In fact MCI is playing in the hands of Corporates and Pharmaceutical companies so that savings made would be distributed amongst themselves.
   The other reform which he has proposed is the rural MBBS course which will be another avenue to earn money. Inspite of so many government medical colleges in our country and increase in the number of private medical colleges, there is still a dearth of doctors especially in the rural setup. As it is the government is not able to cope up with shortage of teaching faculty in government medical colleges, how will it find additional faculty for rural MBBS colleges. Eventually when government is not able to run these colleges as is bound to happen, the private medical colleges will come into picture yet again filling the pockets of MCI as expected. It is ironical that govt. is not able to provide infrastructure for existing colleges and is thinking of this huge expansion spending millions of rupees. Politicians and beaurocrats sitting in Delhi consider AIIMS , PGI, JIPMER as modern govt. institutions and are not aware of the pathetic condition of state run medical colleges. One of the major disadvantage of rural MBBS would be doctors with half knowledge which in itself would be a major public health hazard. Knowing the past record of MCI, its difficult to believe that guidelines for rural course would have transparency .Since its inception ,MCI has never followed its guidelines and kept changing them verbally as and when they wanted it without any documentation especially in private medical colleges which succumb to its authority thus jeopardizing the future of hundreds of such doctors who work in these colleges.
   It is indeed shocking that the medical education in our country is controlled by a man so corrupt. The main motive only remains to make more money by giving permission to more and more medical colleges inspite of not following the norms, not having the requisite infrastructure, teaching staff etc which is compensated by the heavy bribes these colleges pay in order to get recognition. Its no longer a hidden fact however no action has been taken in this regard so far.
   MCI has also eased the cross-over rules and has set a target of bringing back 5,000 Indian doctors, including teachers, settled in US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and has removed the main bottleneck by recognising the postgraduate and other degrees of these specific countries .On other hand thousands of doctors who have done post graduation (DNB) under National Board of Examination which is an autonomous body under the ministry of health and family welfare are not being considered as teaching faculty in medical colleges. Diplomate of national Board ( DNB) was established in 1975 with the prime objective of improving quality of medical education in the country by providing high and uniform standard of post graduate examination in modern medicine on all India basis. Now after 35 years of its inception and inspite of Government of India gazette notification ( 20th feb 2009 )establishing the equivalence of DNB to MD/MS for all purposes including teaching purposes, the MCI is armtwisting the medical colleges to not consider these doctors as teaching faculty which find it easier to abide by MCI in the given situation rather than facing derecognition . The rules keep changing every year with nothing ever given in written by the MCI and the doctor has no option but to quit the college It is ironical that on one hand MCI wants to remove all the qualified DNB teachers from colleges , on other hand seems eager to bring in foreign medical graduates. It is shocking to see that such an important government order is not followed just because of a single person namely Ketan Desai who is against DNB . The logical reason for this could be that by downgrading DNB’s and refusing to consider them as staff in medical colleges, there will be increase in demand for post graduate seats in privately owned medical colleges. Can an individual/ organization be above the Government of India? MCI is only a recommending body with final powers resting with the government. With these doctors quitting colleges and joining private practice there will be a further deficiency in already understaffed private/ government colleges which have part time or full time practitioners as teaching faculty. Do we really want quality teaching in our colleges or do we want to run them as just means of earning more and more money? Because of easy access to higher education by paying money the quality of students who go for post graduation has already deteriorated and the problem of shortage of doctors is not solved as having invested so much of money these doctors jump into earning money as soon as possible. This is an unhealthy trend and there is no way to stop it. Medical education has become a business and once you invest more money you expect higher returns.
   It is sad to note that government of India ( Ministry of health) being a regulatory body for medical education expresses its inability to take action against Dr. Ketan Desai and MCI( who are synonymous) for not honouring its own gazette notification.The health minister Mr. Ghulam Nabi Azad shows his helplessness to take action against MCI or its chief by saying, he has no control over them even when he is arrested for corruption charges by CBI.
   Politicians and media are busy covering the IPL saga which involves the rich and the elite class whereas no one appears to be bothered about the quality of medical education and doctors which if unchecked will be a major health hazard for the common man.
   So what should be done? The draft bill to set up the National Council for Human Resource in Health (NCHRH) is ready and if passed in parliament will replace the existing Medical council, Dental council and Pharma council. Its important that the power to regulate the medical education is not once again put in the hands of a single person but a group of people. This is the only way to cleanse the already tainted medical education system in our country and is the need of the hour. If this bill is passed in the current session of parliament it would play a major role in curtailing the malpractices by MCI which would then cease to exist. It is imperative that a proper enquiry is conducted and the guilty officials are brought to the book who have been blatantly misusing their power with no one to question them .

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