BSc.AYUSH

Medical fraternity peeved over new MCI course Ashish Gaur, TNN | Sep 26, 2012, 01.38PM IST Tweet INDORE: The decision of Medical Council of India (MCI) to introduce three-and-a-half-year degree course in community medicine after 12{+t}{+h} class, to deal with the shortage of doctors in rural areas, has evoked wide resentment among allopathic doctors and Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) fraternity here. Medical practitioners rue that B Sc in community health course that will be started from April next will lead to contradiction as students with allopathic and AYUSH degrees are already doing the same work. They say government should rather improve facilities in the rural areas rather than creating another lot of unemployed youth. President of the Indian Medical Association-MP branch Dr Dilip Acharya said, "Nearly a lakh AYUSH doctors in the country are unemployed and the new course will only lead to resentment within the community. Union government should rather train unemployed AYUSH doctors for six months and allow them to work to meet scarcity of medical officers in rural areas." Dr Acharya raised ambiguity over the surety that B Sc community medicine degree holders will serve the villages. "What if they take advantage of their degree and start practicing in urban areas?," he added. As per MCI, B Sc community health degree holder will be a special cadre of health workers trained mainly in district hospitals and placed in sub-centres or primary health centres and will be taught "some module of clinical work". This means this cadre can actually diagnose and treat basic medical cases, get involved in immunization programmes and administer extended first aid. The AYUSH medical officer association too is apprehensive about the new course. They said the government should give preference to people who have knowledge about medicine and body physiology and train them for better utilization of human resources. "A large number of people with AYUSH degrees are already unemployed. Government should initiate action to provide job avenues to them first," said Dr S D Jadhav, president, AYUSH medical officer association.