Madras High Court raps NMC over gender curriculum
CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has rapped the National Medical Commission (NMC) for failing to come up with a comprehensive medical curriculum on gender and sexuality while seeking a report on the issue.
The NMC published the medical curriculum on August 29 and withdrew it after drawing flak from the stakeholders. Later, it released a fresh publication on September 12.
Referring to this, Justice N Anand Venkatesh, in a recent order, said that even in the fresh guidelines, only certain issues were addressed. He said that an article written by Dr L Ramakrishnan titled Curriculum Content Disorder can be taken as the base document to enable the NMC to submit a report.
“The report shall specifically deal with the issues that have been raised in this article. Either, the necessary change must be made in the curriculum or if it is not carried out, the report must specifically state as to why such change cannot be made,” the judge ordered NMC.
Apart from the other issues, this court is more concerned with the usage of the term “Gender Identity Disorder”. This court has been urging right from the beginning that there is “no psychological disorder involved in a person belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community” and that such a “mistaken understanding must be corrected”.
Unfortunately, once again the word “disorder” has found its place even in the new curriculum and it has to be immediately removed, he noted. The orders were passed on Wednesday when the petition regarding rights of the LGBTQIA+ persons came up for hearing.