BHUBANESWAR: Director General of Health Services Prof Jagdish Prasad on Saturday said the Centre, in consultation with the Medical Council of India (MCI), is taking steps to revise the syllabus of the MBBS course.The new syllabus may be ready in another one and a half years, he said while delivering a public lecture on ‘National Health Programmes’ at the SOA University here. This, he said, is being done to ensure that students did not require to study in great detail many aspects of medical science in which they could specialise subsequently.
“What is the need to teach a student at MBBS level 10 different surgeries when all they need is to acquire a good knowledge as to how to treat common diseases,” he said while urging students to take great care in studying the subjects of anatomy, physiology and pathology for a strong foundation.
Prof Prasad said, efforts to eradicate leprosy was largely successful in most States though the problem persisted in Odisha, Chhatisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand besides the Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
He said, the Government has launched a door-to-door campaign to identify leprosy cases and 40,000 cases were detected after health workers visited 40 crore houses in these identified areas, he said. “In Odisha, 5100 new cases had been identified,” he said.A renowned cardiothoracic surgeon, Prof Prasad said Odisha, along with Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand and Meghalaya, accounted for 80 per cent of malaria cases even as government has drawn up a plan to eliminate the vector-borne disease in the country by 2025.
“Odisha accounts for 40 per cent of the malaria cases and we aim to reduce the incidence in the country by one-third this year,” he said.Pointing out that diabetes, hypertension, stroke, chronic obstructive lung disease and cancer were the five non-communicable ailments that accounted for around 60 per cent of deaths in the world, Prof Prasad said most of these diseases could be kept at arm’s length only through healthy habits and lifestyle.
“Regular exercise, yoga and abstinence from smoking and alcohol could help a person to avoid such non-communicable diseases,” he said.Interacting with the doctors and faculty members, the DGHS said the issue of antibiotic resistance was a raging topic world over and the Government has requested MCI to make it mandatory for every medical college to have a pharmacovigilance committee to monitor use of antibiotics.“Antibiotic resistance is worse than cancer as it cannot be treated and will kill,” he said.
The Vice-Chancellor of SOA University, Prof. Amit Banerjee presided over the meeting. Dean of the faculty of medical sciences Prof Gangadhar Sahu also spoke.