Watching Argus

MCI had put a ban on doctors receiving any freebies/gifts from pharma companies, but:

• A Mumbai healthcare company took 200 diabetologists in Jan  and another group of oncologists in mid-March to Turkey
• Another Mumbai-based pharma company sent 100 doctors on a Rs 40,000 each package to Dubai in mid-Feb and put them up at the luxurious Dhow Palace Hotel
• A Hyderabad-based ayurvedic pharma firm paid for 200 doctors to visit its factories

Source: Monthly Index of Medical Specialities (MIMS)

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While health experts and ministry officials will sit together over the next one year to reconfigure the workings and duties of the MCI, a seven-member committee has been given charge for the moment. The committee will start functioning in a week or two and promises to bring about “radical changes” to revamp medical education in the country.

Says Union health secretary K. Sujatha Rao: “This committee will not have an advisory role but will actively run the MCI, including issuing licences and permissions. It will conduct inspections and regulate medical education, for a maximum of one year. It will also suggest ways to reform MCI and will help in preparing a bill which we plan to introduce in the monsoon session of Parliament.”

The committee will be headed by gastroenterologist Dr S.K. Sarin of G.B. Pant hospital and will have former National Institute of Immunology director Prof Ranjit Roy Chowdhary, Dr Sita Naik, Dr Gautam Sen, cardiac surgeon Dr Devi Shetty and former head of Safdarjung hospital Dr R.L. Salhan. Former aiims head Dr P. Venugopal’s name is also among those suggested for the panel.

For the future, however, the government is thinking of dividing the MCI’s activities. “Licensing and regulation need to be divided and looked after by two different bodies. Also, there needs to be an overarching organisation to regulate medical education,” says a senior health ministry official. “We have learnt from this situation that we need to distribute responsibilities to have more transparency in the system.” Finer details of the framework will be discussed once the panel becomes active.

The Medical Council of India was established in 1934 under the Indian Medical Council Act. Its main function was to establish uniform standards of higher education in medicine and recognition of medical qualifications in India and abroad. Amended in 1956 and 2001, a  further effort to give more powers to the ministry was turned down by the parliamentary standing committee on health, which argued that the move would destroy the council’s autonomy.

“The government should have the power to give directions to the MCI for what it has to do. If they do something wrong, we should be able to take action,” says Rao. “There is a crisis and our inability to respond to it brought out the shortcomings in the Medical Council Act.” She also said that the draft law to regulate medical education in the country would be ready within a month.

Meanwhile, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has opposed the dissolution of the MCI, terming it “highly dangerous for the standards of medical education in the country”. IMA president G. Samaram said that “replacing the MCI with a panel is very objectionable as it may lead to the politicisation of education in the country. The person in question should be punished instead of dissolving the body.”