<p>Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday informed state health secretaries on the basic formalities of introducing a three-and-a-half year course in bachelor degree in medicine and surgery.<br /><br />These doctors will only work in rural areas. Azad said the rural cadres will be trained in district hospitals in which a certain number of beds can be utilised to train these rural doctors. <br /><br />The Medical Council of India (MCI) will be holding a meeting with vice chancellors in the first week of February to fine tune the modalities to come out with the new rural medical course. The proposal seems to be a revival of the Licentiate Medical Practitioners (LMP) scheme that prevailed before independence. <br /><br />Meeting needs<br /><br />In the LMP scheme, students were trained as medical doctors for around three years, awarded a diploma and then asked to fulfill the needs of rural health care as a way to bridge the gap between demand and supply of skilled doctors outside metropolitan India. <br />LMPs, in fact, outnumbered MBBS graduates and they were largely serving in the rural areas. The Bhore committee report of 1946 unified medical courses into the standard five-and-a-half years MBBS degree course, abolishing the LMP option.<br /><br />Last month, the West Bengal government came up with a similar proposal of creating a rural cadre of doctors through a separate and shortened medical course. <br /><br />Though it was passed by the assembly, the proposal led to severe political and civil opposition with critics charging the government for considering village-folks as second grade citizens.<br /><br />Earlier the central government proposed one year rural stints for fresh MBBS graduates, which would have given them additional weightage in their post-graduate entrance.</p>
<p>Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday informed state health secretaries on the basic formalities of introducing a three-and-a-half year course in bachelor degree in medicine and surgery.<br /><br />These doctors will only work in rural areas. Azad said the rural cadres will be trained in district hospitals in which a certain number of beds can be utilised to train these rural doctors. <br /><br />The Medical Council of India (MCI) will be holding a meeting with vice chancellors in the first week of February to fine tune the modalities to come out with the new rural medical course. The proposal seems to be a revival of the Licentiate Medical Practitioners (LMP) scheme that prevailed before independence. <br /><br />Meeting needs<br /><br />In the LMP scheme, students were trained as medical doctors for around three years, awarded a diploma and then asked to fulfill the needs of rural health care as a way to bridge the gap between demand and supply of skilled doctors outside metropolitan India. <br />LMPs, in fact, outnumbered MBBS graduates and they were largely serving in the rural areas. The Bhore committee report of 1946 unified medical courses into the standard five-and-a-half years MBBS degree course, abolishing the LMP option.<br /><br />Last month, the West Bengal government came up with a similar proposal of creating a rural cadre of doctors through a separate and shortened medical course. <br /><br />Though it was passed by the assembly, the proposal led to severe political and civil opposition with critics charging the government for considering village-folks as second grade citizens.<br /><br />Earlier the central government proposed one year rural stints for fresh MBBS graduates, which would have given them additional weightage in their post-graduate entrance.</p>