Massive graft in Medical Council of India: doctors

NEW DELHI: Mounting pressure on the government, a group of doctors, health activists, civil society members, parlimantarians and former health secretaries joined hands launching a national coalition to press for restructuring of the Medical Council of India.

The move comes a day after the Supreme court used its powers and set up a committee, headed by former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha to oversee the functioning of the MCI for at least a year, following a damning Parliamentary Standing Committee report in March that stated the MCI’s composition as “opaque” and “biased” against the larger public health goals.

The formation of coalition, Dr Samiran Nundy, dean, Ganga Ram Institute for Postgraduate Medical Education and Research said, was needed for improvement in ethics in people in medical practice, to make MCI responsible for fair accreditation of medical colleges, for improvement in graduation standards etc.

“The MCI should have half the members from the public and half of them should be nominated doctors and not elected. The MCI needs to be restructured,” he told this newspaper. A letter drafted by the former health secretary Sujatha Rao, calling for an urgent need to reform and restructure the MCI has already been sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Adopting a resolution- that demanded scrapping of the Indian Medical Council Act, the doctors said its provisions were lenient and that it should be replaced with a new law to check corruption in medical education.

UK’s GMC could be a good model in restructuring MCI
A group of doctors, health activists, civil society members, parlimantarians and former health secretaries joined hands launching a national coalition to press for restructuring of Medical Council of India (MCI).

The alliance was announced by Dr Abhay Shukla of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (People’s Health Movement) with representatives of a number of doctors’ bodies including Indian Doctors for Ethical Practice (IDEP) and SATHI.

Dr Jasodhara Dasgupta of Medico Friend Circle, another partner of the alliance, said the time was ripe for the government to take strong action against MCI which she said has failed to equip doctors to handle even primary health care issues.

Dr Nundy suggested that Britain’s General Medical Council could be a good model to follow in restructuring MCI. “The MCI is so corrupt that everything they do it is for money. There is a huge capitation fees, people bribed the examiners, the doctors charged hugely and ask for unnecessary investigations. 67 per cent medical fraternity have not published a single research paper from year 2005-2014. We therefore felt to form a group of like-minded people to presurise government and Parliamentarians to revamp the MCI,” he added.

A former health secretary on condition of anonymity said, “Even as the SC direction was a great shot in the arm, the coalition will further build pressure on the government to comply with the parliamentary standing committee report.”

City doctors call for new clear system
Scrapping of the Medical Council of India is not a good idea and a transparent system has to be created, council members said here on Wednesday. MCI member Dr Ramesh Reddy said, “Whatever deficiencies are there, they need to be worked upon and rectified. In 2005, there was a body of governors and they seem to have not been able to handle the issues due to which MCI was formed again. We have to look for a remedy within, wherein discipline and ethics are enforced.” Other doctors said the MCI was becoming a body of people who are trying to please each other. Medical education was suffering due to this, they said.