Health Bulletin 11/July/ 2025

Finalising the Teachers Eligibility Qualifications in medical colleges, the National Medical Commission (NMC) has now allowed medical diploma holders to join medical colleges as faculty. This comes as a relief for these doctors, whose careers became uncertain after the erstwhile Medical Council of India (MCI), now replaced by NMC, restricted the PG medical diploma holders from taking faculty positions at medical colleges.

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that releasing the final Medical Institutions (Qualifications of Faculty) Regulations, 2025, in the official Gazette dated June 30, 2025, NMC laid down the eligibility qualifications for medical teachers at medical institutes.

NMC has mentioned that to be appointed for the post of Assistant Professors in medical broad specialities and surgical broad specialities in medical colleges, diploma holders appointed as Senior Residents in a recognised medical institute before 08.06.2017, having a total experience of four years as Senior Resident, shall be eligible.

The Government of Andhra Pradesh has approached the National Medical Commission (NMC) seeking permission to commence postgraduate medical courses at the newly established medical colleges in Vizianagaram, Rajamahendravaram, Eluru, Machilipatnam, and Nandyala.

Recently, these medical colleges started with an intake capacity of 150 MBBS seats each.

Confirming that the Government is seeking NMC nod for starting PG medical courses at these medical colleges, the director of medical education (DME) Dr DSVL Narasimham said, "We wrote to the NMC to admit two students per branch in broad specialty PG medical courses, including MD (Doctor of Medicine) and MS (Master of Surgery) programmes such as paediatrics, gynaecology, orthopaedics, anaesthesia, and others from the 2025–26 academic year."

The DME further informed that they write to the Apex Medical Commission in November 2024 seeking permission to start the PG medical courses and admit students from the coming academic years only after developing all necessary infrastructural amenities, including faculty and clinical materials, which are key parameters for NMC's assessment to grant LoP for admitting the new PG admissions.

A major controversy has erupted in Gujarat following allegations of unauthorised stem cell therapy trials being conducted for years without proper approvals at a government hospital that may be linked to the unconfirmed deaths of 741 kidney patients, as alleged by the Gujarat Congress party spokesperson Parthivrajsinh Kathavadia.

At a recent press conference, Kathavadia alleged that between 1999 and 2017, a total of 2,352 patients at the government-run Institute of Kidney Diseases and Research Centre (IKDRC) in Ahmedabad were subjected to experimental stem cell therapy. He alleged that all these data and findings have been documented in a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report.

According to his claims, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report revealed that the therapy resulted in the death of 741 kidney patients, failed in 91% of the cases, with 569 patients experiencing kidney transplant failure, and complications in 110 patients prevented kidney transplants. Moreover, 2,132 out of 2,352 patients experienced unsuccessful outcomes.

The Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) has notified regarding the process of refunding the security deposit of National Eligibility and Entrance Test-Postgraduate (NEET PG) counselling candidates for the academic year 2024.

Through the notice, it has been informed that the refund of the security deposit for 10 candidates of NEET PG Counselling 2024 could not be processed by the financial custodian due to NEFT failure, as the account was either invalid or not present.

Therefore, to reinitiate the refund process, the candidates are requested to submit their updated bank account details in the form of an Affidavit, duly notarised on a court stamp paper. The completed Affidavit must be emailed to the MCC Finance department on or before 31 July 2025.