MUHS offering guidance to Ukraine returned medicos, first-year students encouraged to re-appear in NEET

It said while the NMC had so far "not allowed to transfer or accommodate any foreign medical student in any Indian medical institute/ university", the regulatory body had allowed medical graduates with incomplete internship, due to their leaving their colleges or universities abroad in view of the war or the Covid pandemic, to complete the remaining part of the internship in India.

"It is humbly submitted that in case these students with (a) Poor Merit are allowed admission in premier medical colleges in India by default, there may be several litigations from those desirous candidates who could not get seats in these colleges and have taken admission in either lesser known colleges or have been deprived of a seat in medical colleges. Further, in case of affordability, if these candidates are allocated Private Medical Colleges in India, they once again may not be able to afford the fees structure of the concerned institution", the affidavit stated.

As per the latest media report by Indian Express, in an attempt to address the problems faced by the Ukraine returned medicos, the State Medical Education Minister Amit Deshmukh along with the officials from MUHS had launched e-learning solutions for the medicos.

While commenting on this, MUHS VC Lt Kantikar referred to the fact that in Ukraine, the method of teaching the curriculum was different. "Hence, it was not possible to amalgamate the system here. So the expert faculty tied up with Elsevier, a noted medical publisher, to prepare digital content for the three-month online training," he said.

Speaking about this, the Professor and Head of Medical Education, MUHS, Dr. Chitra Ambhure referred to the multiple inquiries from the students and parents initially. "Students were encouraged to register with the online programme and a user email address was provided, she said. The three-month programme has been successful," mentioned Dr. Ambhure.

Around 1200 such Maharashtra based students had enlisted for the three-month long online session, where the first-year medicos who returned from Ukraine were encouraged for re-appearing in NEET.

"We have encouraged all first-year medical students, who may have missed just four to five months, to re- appear for UG NEET while mid-year students have started online sessions with their respective universities in Ukraine. The final-year students are now preparing for the foreign medical graduate examination to be held in December this year. We have informed them that once they have appeared for the examination, they can approach MUHS for an internship," added the MUHS VC.

It should be mentioned in this context that recently NMC informed about its No-Objection for academic mobility program in respect of Indian Medical Students who are studying in Ukraine.

The apex medical regulator agreed to recognise the programme offered by Ukraine to allow such students to complete their education as the degree will be awarded by the parent Ukrainian university only.

Recently issuing a clarification in this regard, NMC also informed the students about the list of countries where the "Academic Mobility Program" is applicable.