{"id":30497,"date":"2018-10-26T16:27:44","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T10:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=30497"},"modified":"2018-10-26T16:27:44","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T10:57:44","slug":"first-step-in-a-long-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/first-step-in-a-long-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"First step in a long journey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/first-step-in-a-long-journey\/article23295791.ece\"><strong>First step in a long journey<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The National Medical Commission Bill seeks to make structural changes in an exploitative health-care system<\/p>\n<p><strong>Some Problems that NMC bill seeks to address<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>India needs 3,00,000 more doctors in order to meet the World Health Organisation standard of the ideal doctor-population ratio.<\/li>\n<li>There is an 81% shortage of specialists in community health centres (CHC), the first point of contact for a\u00a0patient\u00a0with a specialist doctor.<\/li>\n<li>Those most affected by this are poor and rural patients who are then forced to consult quacks. Another fact is that 82.2% of providers of \u201cmodern medicine\u201d in rural areas do not have a medical qualification and only 21% of the country\u2019s doctors serve them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Solutions offered by the bill<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Monetary Penalty: <\/strong>The Bill puts in place a mechanism to assess and rate medical colleges regularly, with a high monetary penalty for failure to comply with standards.<\/li>\n<li><strong>De-recognition:<\/strong> Three such failures will result in the de-recognition of a college.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Regulation of fees by the government:<\/strong> There is also an enabling provision for the government to regulate the fees of up to 40% seats in private medical colleges.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Relaxation of criteria for setting up of new colleges:<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The Bill goes a step further with a relaxation of the criteria for approving a college in specific cases.<\/li>\n<li>Currently, there is a blanket standard for establishing a medical college in India, which disregards the contextual realities in some areas such as difficult terrain or a low population density.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><u>Example:<\/u> Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, and Nagaland do not have a single medical college.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Strengthening Primary Centres<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Strengthening primary centres can ensure that patients who can be treated at the \u201cbase\u201d (SCs or PHCs) are treated there only.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Utilising AYUSH practitioners as mid-level providers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With the government now planning to revamp 1,50,000 sub-centres into health and wellness centres by 2022, there is need for an equivalent number of mid-level providers<\/p>\n<p>For this, India\u2019s 7,70,000 AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) practitioners can be tapped<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Bridge Course: <\/strong>The Bill has facilitated this by providing for a bridge course for AYUSH\/non-allopathic doctors<\/li>\n<li>This course, to be designed by a joint sitting of all\u00a0medicinesystems, will ensure that non-allopathic doctors are trained to prescribe modern medicines in a limited way, within the scope of primary care.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Preventing cross-pathy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>An added measure in the Bill prevents \u201ccross-pathy\u201d or the unqualified cross-over of health-care providers from one system to another<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Bill provides for two separate national registers \u2013 allopathic doctors, and AYUSH doctors who complete the bridge course, respectively.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the end, the Bill seeks to make structural changes in a stagnant and increasingly exploitative health-care system. While it is no magic bullet, it should be looked at as a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First step in a long journey Context The National Medical Commission Bill seeks to make structural changes in an exploitative health-care system Some Problems that NMC bill seeks to address India needs 3,00,000 more doctors in order to meet the World Health Organisation standard of the ideal doctor-population ratio. There is an 81% shortage of&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/first-step-in-a-long-journey\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">First step in a long journey<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704844477},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}