One-year rural posting made mandatory for MBBS students

New Delhi, May 21 (PTI) Aspiring doctors in India will have to spend a year working in rural areas before getting their MBBS degrees, as the government has decided to make rural posting compulsory for them. In a letter to the Medical Council of India (MCI), India's Health Ministry has asked the MCI Board of Governors to make rural posting for doctors mandatory and include it in the MBBS course curriculum. Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said doctors will be attached with the Ministry's flagship national rural health mission (NRHM) during the year-long rural posting which will also help improve health care services in villages. Once this proposal becomes part of MBBS curriculum, a medical student, after completing four and a half years of study and thereafter the hospital internship, will have to undergo a mandatory year-long house job in the form of a rural posting before getting the MBBS degree. Till then, the degree would be provisional. Chairman of MCI Board of Governors K K Talwar told PTI that the one-year compulsory rural posting for doctors is in the offing and modalities in this respect are being worked out. The posting would be made mandatory in a designated rural area. Talwar said this one-year mandatory rural posting will help aspiring doctors to learn from senior doctors who will act as mentors in the rural area. The MBBS graduates, he said, will be attached with a rural hospital and a nearby medical college during this one-year period. They will also get a reasonable stipend from the NRHM for their services during this period, he said. Justifying the proposal, Azad said it takes almost seven years or even more to become a doctor and to actually get the permission to start prescribing medicines in developed countries whereas the MBBS course duration in India is much shorter. The Minister said due to the shorter duration of the course here than in the developed nations, many students prefer to study MBBS course in India and then carry out higher studies abroad. Talwar also said that it takes seven to eight years to obtain a medical undergraduate degree in most countries and studying in India is also cheaper than in the developed world. PTI