Rural healthcare

THE most commendable initiative taken by the National Medical Commission (NMC) in order to plug the loopholes in medical education relates to providing basic healthcare to India’s rural people. Denied easy access to medical facilities, villagers have been suffering immense hardships even as most health surveys reveal a rising prevalence of lifestyle and non-communicable diseases among them. To be applicable from the 2023 MBBS batch, the NMC has drawn up new regulations which supersede the 1997 rules. The updating of the curriculum was long overdue.

The norm designed to ensure an outreach to the villages entails a ‘family adoption programme’, under which MBBS students are expected to adopt five village families each and make 26 visits to them during their course, putting in 78 hours. To ensure adherence to this clinical and practical approach, at least 80 per cent attendance for family visits has been prescribed for the medical students to be eligible to take exams.

The effort to connect the budding doctors with the villagers is commendable as it will, hopefully, address the disparity in healthcare in cities and the countryside. It is a matter of concern that while the rural areas are home to 70 per cent of the country’s population, less than 30 per cent of the doctors work there. As per the Rural Health Statistics, 2021-22, the village Community Health Centres are suffering from over 50 per cent shortage of doctors. Earlier attempts at improving these statistics, such as bond money for compulsory rural service for the physicians graduating from government institutions, where their education is subsidised, have not made much difference. The bond that the doctors now build as students with village families can inspire them to serve the underprivileged and not just hanker after high-paying jobs in city hospitals.