NEW DELHI: Doctors across India are opposing a provision in the National Medical Commission Bill tabled in Parliament on Friday, that seeks to let homeopaths and practitioners of other alternative medicines practice modern medicine through a short-term course.
The Bill, aimed to regulate medical education by replacing Medical Council with India (MCI) with a National Medical Commission, has introduced the concept of a Bridge Course to promote medical pluralism by allowing AYUSH doctors to practice allopathy.
Most doctors’ bodies are up in arms against the proposal saying it is akin to “giving legal sanction to quackery in the country”.
“This provision is totally unacceptable as it will lead to an army of half-baked doctors,” said K K Aggarwal, president of Indian Medical Association. “A doctor is registered with a council, but in case of a bridged doctor, there will always be ambiguity on the registration aspect. If those doctors make mistakes and people pay with their lives because of them, who is going to be held accountable? We as an association feel that by pushing this provision, the government is giving sanction to quackery.” Aggarwal’s association represents over three lakh doctors.
Satish Tyagi, secretary of Delhi Medical Association, said the association will knock on every door possible to “get the contentious clause chucked out from the Bill”.
Not every medical professional is protesting as some see it as an initiative to enhance doctor-patient ratio in the country. “Even MBBS doctors are not allowed to work as specialists or super specialist and have a limit to what they can do. I see no problem if doctors from other streams are given basic training in modern medicine and are permitted to work at lower levels than MBBS to treat patients at primary levels,” said Bhaibhav Kumar, a doctor in Dhanbad. “After all, they also pursue five-year courses in other forms of medicine and study physiology and anatomy like MBBS doctors.”
A few studies have have shown that registered medical practitioner or AYUSH doctors have helped provide medical care in remote areas as MBBS doctors prefer urban postings.
A study by Delhi’s public health research institute Public Health Foundation of India in 2014 had highlighted that in 32 per cent of primary health centres in remote and tribal areas, alternative medicine practitioners carry out clinical care.