New Delhi: Six years after the central government amended rules to allow doctors with a diploma from the College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPS) in Mumbai to practise as specialists and carry out procedures that only postgraduate degree holders were permitted to do earlier, the National Medical Commission (NMC) has now recommended withdrawing the recognition of such diploma courses, ThePrint has learnt.
Every year, nearly 1,200 MBBS doctors are awarded these diplomas and are regarded as specialists.
Prior to 2017, CPS diplomas — offered in anaesthesia, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, orthopaedics, radiology, and other specialities — were recognised only by the governments of Maharashtra and Gujarat.
In 2017, however, the Union health ministry — in consultation with the Medical Council of India (MCI) — notified that all diploma courses conducted by the CPS would be considered the equivalent of a postgraduate degree retrospectively from 2009.
But now, the NMC — which replaced the MCI as India’s medical education regulator in 2020 — has written to the health ministry saying that the Post-Graduate Medical Education Board (PGMEB) had deliberated on the issue and found that granting the diploma courses PG equivalence was outside the NMC’s purview. ThePrint has seen a copy of the letter, dated 13 April.
The PGMEB also recommended that the three diploma courses (DPB, DCH and DGO) for which the health ministry had granted equivalence should be withdrawn from the next academic session.
With this, the NMC will now recognise only two postgraduate qualifications for MBBS doctors: MS/MD and DNB (Diplomate of National Board).
ThePrint reached Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan via phone for comment but had not received a response by the time of publication. This report will be updated when a response is received. The Print also reached NMC chairman Dr Suresh Chandra Sharma and was directed to the commission’s spokesperson, Dr Yogendra Malik. Malik, however, could not be reached despite multiple calls.
Also Read: National Medical Commission bans ‘Conversion Therapy’, calls it professional misconduct
‘No clarity on fate of diploma courses’
The health ministry had granted PG equivalence to CPS diploma holders with a view to addressing the shortage of specialist doctors in the country. Over the last few years, while the number of PG seats in medicine as well as MBBS seats have increased substantially, the gap remains.
Government figures, for instance, show that while the number of UG seats increased by 72 per cent to 88,120 in 2022-23 from 51,348 before 2014, the number of PG seats — which also includes DNB and CPS — surged to 55,595 from 31,185 over the same period.
A senior official from the health ministry’s medical education division, who did not wish to be named, told ThePrint that the government’s move in 2017 had enabled hospitals to opt for affiliation from CPS and offer on-job training for resident doctors for two years, at the end of which they could be considered specialists in their respective branches.
“The initiative was intended to make up for the huge shortfall of specialists, particularly gynaecologists, paediatricians and anaesthesiologists in government hospitals in India but with the NMC withdrawing recognition, there is no clarity on the fate of these courses,” the official added.
Another official in the division explained that it remains to be seen whether the Union health minister would accept the NMC’s recommendations or not.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: India’s doctor-patient ratio better than WHO norm of 1:1000, government tells Rajya Sabha