Following pressure from the private medical doctors, the Union Health Ministry has for now dumped its much-ambitious proposal to make one-year rural posting mandatory for medical students before they take admission in post-graduate courses.
Initially, the proposal was to be implemented from 2014-15. However, sources in the Ministry said that no decision has been taken by the Medical Council of India (MCI) on the proposed notification, which was cleared by the Health Ministry during the UPA regime. Though soon after taking over the charge of the Ministry, then Union Health Minister Harshvardhan had after a detailed brainstorming decided to tweak the recommendation by making a medical student while pursuing PG to must spend a year in village, this proposal also seems to have been thrown in the cold storage.
Medical students backed by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and Delhi Medical Association (DMA) has been protesting the Government decision, claiming that they were not against rural posting but that it should not be made mandatory. They favored rural posting to be made voluntary.
Their contention is that there is no infrastructure in rural areas with many primary health centres (PHC) existing only on paper or were either in dilapidated structure. There is no water facility, no school for children, they said, while adding that security is major concern in rural areas. They also argued that one year mandatory service will extend already long courses of medical studies.The decision to send the MBBS doctors for mandatory one year rural posting was aimed to meet gaps in demand and supply in the medical services for the villagers. The Government was of the view that even if the MBBS doctors serve rural posting, people in the villages can expect better medical facilities.India produces 50,000 MBBS graduates annually and has 25,000 primary health centres across the country, suggesting huge shortage of doctors in rural areas.