RGUHS says no to new council

The Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Science (RGUHS) has decried the recommendation for creating a National Council for Human Resources in Health (NCHRH) and scrapping the Medical Council of India (MCI) owing to corruption and other deficiencies, made by a national task force which went into the issue.

According to sources in the medical education department, the RGUHS has in a report to the Union government, strongly backed the MCI, arguing that its performance is satisfactory and the task force’s suggestion to set up the NCHRH in its place is “not in tune with the present day concept of decentralisation”.

While RGUHS agreed there were several problems with agencies overseeing medical education in the country, it felt they should be retained in the interest of maintaining high standards. “The establishment of NCHRH will undermine the autonomy of the MCI and other apex bodies which have undoubtedly brought appreciable changes in the health scenario,” the state medical varsity said.

“It is difficult to even imagine how a council with five members only will be able to guide and oversee all the faculties of over 1,000 health professional institutions,” it added. RGUHS also opposed the task force’s recommendation that professionals who have received medical-health related training from NCHRH accredited non- academic institutions, should be permitted to appear for PG programmes at the university level and obtain MD/MS degrees, saying this could dilute the quality of working professionals in the field.

Member of the task force, Dr Devi Shetty of Narayana Hrudayalaya, refused to comment on the stand taken by RGUHS saying, “our job is only to submit reports”.

A senior officer of the medical education department, however felt that RGUHS vice-chancellor Dr S. Ramananda Shetty should be held accountable for the institute’s defence of the MCI.

“To the best of our knowledge most rural areas of the state still do not have access to good doctors and the MCI is to blame,” he said.