Medical students home, but their future still clouded by uncertainty
Currently, the Centre has no plan to make special relaxations so that the students can complete their MBBS degree without prolonging the course’s duration, The Indian Express has learnt.
Students evacuated from Ukraine with their relatives at Gandhinagar, Friday. (Nirmal Harindran)
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With thousands of medical students returning to India from war-torn Ukraine, there is a certain level of uncertainty over the completion of their course. Currently, the Centre has no plan to make special relaxations so that the students can complete their MBBS degree without prolonging the course’s duration, The Indian Express has learnt.
Well-placed government sources said going by the statutory regulations applicable on medical students graduating from foreign varsities, there is a buffer of around two years to complete the course. “Hence, the students returning from Ukraine have little to worry about as of now,” sources cited above said.
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India is currently carrying out Operation Ganga to bring back its citizens, mainly medical students, stranded in Ukraine. The Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday said that the number of people who have left Ukraine since advisories for evacuation were issued stood at nearly 18,000.
The National Medical Commission (NMC) does not recognise or approve medical courses completed through online mode. According to its statutory regulations, a medical course from a foreign university has to be completed within 10 years from the date of enrolment.
Also, the regulations don’t allow such students’ migration to a medical college in India for internships or examination. The regulations clearly state that the “MBBS course, training, and internship throughout the course should be done from the same foreign medical institution”.
For the medical graduates, the regulations mandate completion of a supervised 12-month internship in India.
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Sources said at this juncture, there is no proposal to make changes to any of the rules for medical students returning from Ukraine because they have sufficient time to complete the course.
“The MBBS course in Ukraine takes five-and-half years. A student has to complete a 12-month internship in Ukraine and a similar one in India. So, a student normally completes the degree in 7.5 years. Hence, the final year students still have buffer of two years,” sources said.
Significantly, a large number of international students, including those from India, couldn’t return to China to continue their MBBS degree due to the Covid-19 restrictions imposed there. Chinese authorities had conveyed earlier that the course will be completed online. However, on February 8, the NMC objected to this, reiterating that the regulator does not recognise or approve online mode for medical education.
Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies.
With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health.
His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award.
Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time.
Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More
