New Delhi: The government maintained that the National Medical Commission Bill that seeks to replace Medical Council of India with a new body would be beneficial to the medical profession.
On a day when the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has called for suspending routine services for 12 hours in protest against the Bill, Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda said talks were on with the IMA to clear their doubts.
“This is beneficial to the medical profession,” he said in the Rajya Sabha after members raised the issue of strike by the doctors across the country against the Bill.
He said talks with the striking doctors were going on. “Talks are on. We have heard them and also presented our views.”
Besides seeking to replace the Medical Council of India with a new body, the bill also proposes to allow alternative medicine graduates to practise allopathy after completing a “bridge course”.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA) says the Bill will “cripple” the functioning of medical professionals by making them completely answerable to the bureaucracy and non-medical administrators.
Nadda had held talks were held with IMA members yesterday to clear doubts about the Bill.
Earlier, raising the issue, Naresh Agarwal (Samajwadi Party) said many patients have died due to the strike called to oppose the Bill that will enable superseding of the elected medical professionals’ body.
Leader of the Opposition and senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said the government should take initiative to end the strike.
Md Team 
\”(1)What is the IMA (Indian Medical Association)?
(2)Is IMA a statutory government body?
(3) Then how can it disrupt and disturb the medical services all over the India by giving the frequent strike call?
(4) Are all government doctors paid by the IMA?? so that they joined the strike???
(5) On what basis the IMA have been opposing the NMC bill??? Is this IMA want the MCI to continue it\’\’s corruption in an uncontrollable manner???
(6) What is an MCI???? A regulatory body of only few elected doctors without any representative from the society or people …controlling the whole medical education on its way to fill their coffers with the black money… IMA wants this practice of corruption by MCI to continue incessantly through its few elected members….and so it is opposing the governments representation in the NMC board calling it an undemocratic bill???
(7) Medical licensing exam (NEXT)….why do IMA is opposing this exam… as majority of the developed countries including even Nepal also have such type of exam.Even foreign medical graduates of India have to clear the toughest FMGE exam to do practice in India , then what is the problem to the Indian medical graduates….We all know what type of education is imparted to the medical graduates in India\’\’s private medical colleges lacking everything from the teachers to hospital patients….All people knows how do the students get an admission is these money minting private medical colleges as the Quacks produced from such colleges even do not know how to measure the B. P. or to give an injection to the patients…The IMA has been supporting such Quacks by opposing the Medical licensing exam and consequently encouraging the quackery. There must be an evaluation criteria of these medical graduates as well as the medical colleges..through the toughest FMGE like exam..
(8) Although NMC bill also have some controversial clause 49 about the bridge course… so it must be removed as the Allopathic and the Ayaush are the completely different discipline…They can not be merged through just 6 months bridge course….\”
I, for one, am with the govt and wish that the standing committee donot play with words the way juggler with balls.
Kindly put a provision to register postgraduates with foreign qualifications to register in specialist register and work as specialists.
Many Indian doctors with foreign postgrautions cannot register themselves as the present provisions allow only postgraduates of 5 foreign countries to register in the specialist register.
It\’s a pity that government allows Ayush to work as MBBS, but would not allow highly qualified specialists/ superspeciality to register themselves as specialists.