PG Times

The state government may postpone the  UP Post Graduate Medical Entrance Exam   for three weeks considering the agreement reached between the   striking   medical students   and district administration. Admitting that district magistrate Anurag Yadav, who was negotiating with the striking   students, has forwarded the proposal to the state government, principal secretary, JP Sharma said the government may take a decision on March 28. But, he stated that till government takes the decision, UPPGMEE would be held as per schedule on March 31. Medical students had been agitating for last several days demanding cancellation of UPPGMEE. They wanted the government to consider NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) scores for admissions in post graduate medical courses in the state. Organised by the Medical Council of India, NEET was held in November and December 2012 and was later caught in a legal dispute, pending with the apex court and may be dec...

Police forcibly removed the protesting medical students from the King Geroge's Medical University campus on late Monday night and took them to the Police Lines. Some women students alleged that the mahila police misbehaved with them and dragged them away in an inhuman manner. SSP J Ravinder Goud told that students were removed from the campus so that they do not disrupt normal services. They were allowed to leave Police Line with a strict warning that if they created any further problems, then cops will be forced to take stern action against them. Earlier, the stand-off between candidates on hunger strike demanding cancellation of UP-Post Graduate Medical Entrance (UP-PGMEE) and state administration continued on the sixth day on Monday. Students who were admitted to Lohia hospital by the administration, saying they needed immediate medical attention, came back and joined others near the main gate of the KGMU. “They took those on hunger strike to hospital and gave the...

Junior doctors of all medical colleges in Uttar Pradesh went on a flash strike Tuesday after doctors from the King George's Medical College here were forced to end their indefinite hunger strike Monday night. While resident and junior doctors struck work in the day, by Tuesday evening junior doctors in Kanpur, Meerut and Allahabad medical colleges also joined the statewide strike. The doctors went on strike seeking the cancellation of the Uttar Pradesh post graduate medical examination. After several attempts by the administration to have the indefinite fast end failed, Lucknow District Magistrate Anuraag Yadav ordered police to forcibly break up the agitation. Angered at the use of force by police, junior and resident doctors of all medical colleges went on strike and were joined by the doctors of the trauma centre in Lucknow. Doctors have also decided not to celebrate Holi Wednesday. The district administration has since announced the the examinations would be now ...

The state government is all set to hold the UP Post Graduate Medical Entrance Exam (UPPGMEE) to fill post graduate medical seats in state medical colleges which are not even recognised. As per official records, over 10% of the 672 post graduate medical seats in state medical colleges are not recognised by the medical council of India on account of reasons like shortage of teachers and lack of infrastructure. "Going ahead with NEET would mean not taking admission to 73 unrecognised medical seats which would add to the existing crunch of specialist doctors in Uttar Pradesh. Losing 10% seats would be a big loss," said JP Sharma principal secretary medical education.Medical Council of India awards recognition to a medical institution and its departments on the criterion that primarily takes into account number of faculty members in position, resources available with the department, availability of clinical material (patients), nurses, paramedics, library facilities, etc. T...

After another short round of strike late on Monday night, the emergency and put-patient department ( OPD ) services at GaneshShankarVidyarthi  Memorial Medical College ( GSVM ) normalized on Tuesday morning. The  GSVM  authorities reportedly forced the interns and junior doctors to call off their strike by giving them references of their results and public support. After boycotting emergency services late on Sunday night and forcibly closing the OPD on Monday morning, the interns and JRs of  GSVM Medical College  again struck work at around 9.30 pm on Monday. This time the strike was short and was called off around 3 am on Tuesday after the intervention of senior GSVM authorities who reportedly pointed out to the interns threat to their career and public outcry. According to sources, the interns who were back to work on Monday afternoon, got irked by the presence of a huge posse of police on the LLR and GSVM campus. The students said it was done to pressuri...

Protest against UPPGMEE Govt cites breach of peace against fasting students. More than 100 intern doctors who were protesting in front of King George Medical University against the Uttar Pradesh Post Graduate Entrance Examination (UPPGMEE) were arrested late on Monday night. The students — aspirants of postgraduate studies in medical science, many of whom are from medical colleges in Kanpur, Allahabad and Meerut — had boycotted emergency duties and joined the protest against the UPPGMEE, scheduled to be held on March 31. The protest had been going on for the past six days. SP (West) Ajay Kumar said that more than 100 students had been arrested for breach of peace. "As of now, they have been kept in Lucknow Reserve Police Lines. A decision on whether they would be detained or released will be taken by the district administration," he said. Seven of the protesting students, whose health condition had deteriorated due to the hunger strike, were admitted in Ram Manohar...

LUCKNOW: Medical graduates from King George's Medical University (KGMU), opposing the UP Post Graduate Medical Entrance Exam were taken into police custody late Monday evening after senior administrative officials failed to convince them to call off their strike. Later, more than 75 students, including 14 who were fasting for the last six days, were detained at the police lines. The administrative officials had made similar attempt at around Sunday midnight. Medical students sitting on hunger strike were admitted forcibly to the Balrampur Hospital by a team from the district administration. At the government hospitals, the doctors and staff tried to administer the students a glucose and normal saline. Though the hospital staff managed to give them normal saline solution, the students refused to take glucose as it would have broken their fast. By Monday morning, the medicos signed LAMA (leave against medical advice) application and left the hospital to join their fellows outsid...

More than 200 doctors who completed their  MBBS , congregated at the Gujarat University  (GU) and represented against the university's decision to conduct postgraduate medical entrance test on April 28. The students said that they had already appeared for the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) which was held from November 23 to December 26. "We had appeared for the NEET for PG admissions in colleges all over the country in November-December. The GU has recently declared that a state-level entrance will be held on April 28. We had given up studies after appearing in the NEET. One month will be too less a time to prepare for the entrance test which can make or break our career prospects", said a student. They also alleged that the GU wishes to take a local test so that children of influential parents can be obliged. There are 450 PG medical seats in the state for which there is stiff competition not only within the state but also from out state student...

The banging is the vibration of metal coils in the machine caused by rapid pulses of electricity, said Dr. Keith Hentel, chief of emergency/musculoskeletal imaging at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Magnetic resonance imaging produces images of the body by causing shifts in a very strong magnetic field and measuring how tissues react, Dr. Hentel said. The principal magnet of an M.R.I. scanner commonly is strong enough to produce fields 60,000 times the strength of the earth’s natural magnetic field. Inside the scanner are coils of metal wire called gradient coils. When electricity is passed through such a coil, a magnetic field is created. Rapid pulses of electricity cause predictable changes in the field, resulting in tissue changes that can be measured and transformed into anatomic images. The pulses cause not just the desired changes but undesired vibrations of the gradient coils, resulting in the banging heard during an M.R.I. examination. As...

The Supreme Court on Thursday sentenced Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt to five years in jail for getting guns from gangsters involved in the 1993 bombings in Mumbai. Dutt, 53, was found guilty of acquiring illegal weapons from those blamed for the bombings in Mumbai that killed 257 people and was given four weeks to surrender. The actor has already served 18 months in jail. "He will have to serve another three-and-a-half year sentence. We had prepared him for the same," Dutt's lawyer Satish Maneshinde told reporters. "We will wait for a copy of the Supreme Court judgement and then decide the further course of action," he said. "He is a strong man and will fight back." In 2007, the actor was cleared of conspiracy charges in the Mumbai serial blasts but was found guilty of illegal possession of an AK-56 rifle and a pistol. The actor was the most high-profile among 100 people found guilty in the bombings trial and had been originally sentenced to s...

After being denied any help from the state government, students opposing the Uttar Pradesh Post Graduate Medical Entrance Examination (UPPGMEE) on Wednesday sought an audience with  Governor  BL Joshi to put forth their demand for cancellation of the exam . The delegation of students will meet the governor on Thursday. Meanwhile, the students on Wednesday started a demonstration outside the King George's  Medical University  to press for their demands. Sticking to their stand, the students said there was no point in holding a state level exam again when the government has agreed to allot postgraduate seats through the scores obtained in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). Director general medical education Dr KK Gupta, however, said the state government cannot do anything on the issue as it was only complying with the orders of the  Supreme Court  in this regard.

A day to remember World Oral Health Day is celebrated every year on 20 March. It reminds us that healthy teeth, gums and mouth play a crucial role in our ability to work or study without constant, nagging and painful toothache, in our self confidence and in the health of our whole body,  World Oral Health Day 2013 The theme of World Oral Health Day 2013 is ‘Healthy Teeth for Healthy Life’. It reflects the major contribution oral health makes to our lives. Around the world, FDI member dental associations, schools, companies and other groups will be able to celebrate the day with events organized under the single, unifying and simple message. Raising awareness World Oral Health Day provides an opportunity to raise awareness and encourage individuals, families, communities and governments to take measures to lower the incidence of oral disease. Taking action World Oral Health Day offers the dental and oral health community a platform for action: working...

It may not draw crowds like Buckingham Palace or White House yet but Rashtrapati Bhavan is well on its way to becoming a must-see on a visit to the Capital. There has been a crush of visitors to the President's House in one month with nearly 9,500 people coming in. The average of 300-350 visitors a day has now doubled to 700. Between January 5 and February 17, 9500 people visited Rashtrapati Bhavan. "The largest crowd that we have drawn in a day was 1,209 people, '' an official said. Officials hope the heritage building will soon be among the most popular monuments but that might be a bit far-fetched for now. In 2011-2012, Qutub Minar witnessed a footfall of nearly 27.9 lakh visitors while the Red Fort was visited by nearly 26.8 lakh Indian and 1.6 lakh foreign visitors. The third most popular monument is Purana Qila with over 7.5 lakh Indian and over 25,000 foreign visitors in the same year. There is an added dimension of security which means that Rashtrap...

With only three weeks left for the end of the Budget Session, a law to reconstitute the scam-tainted Medical Council of India (MCI) may not be in place as the draft bill is unlikely to be cleared by both Houses within such a short period.  The government had  promised a new regulatory structure within three years of disbanding the MCI after its president Ketan Desai was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation for accepting bribe from a private medical college. The dateline expires on May 13, 2013. In 2010, the Health Ministry issued an ordinance, subsequently replaced by a law, to set up a new regulatory body. It was expected that a National Commission for Human Resources on Health to subsume MCI and other councils would come up. But last October the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health rejected the NCHRH bill downright. As a last-ditch effort, Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Tuesday piloted the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Bill, 20...

Medical students demanding cancellation of the Uttar Pradesh Post Graduate Medical Entrance Examination 2013 were left disappointed after the state government denied to fulfil their demand. The students were informed about this when they went to meet JP Sharma, principal secretary medical education on Monday. Talking to reporters, Sharma said, " We apprised the students about our limitation to intervene in the matter. There is nothing that we can do about it, as we are complying with the orders of the apex court. " The students were demanding cancellation of UPPGMEE on the ground that they had already taken the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). Since both had a similar aim, there was no point in taking the other. They termed it as wastage of efforts and resources and also met Chief Minister  Akhilesh Yadav  on the same. NEET is the result of Medical Council of India's recommendation to hold a common entrance exam. Proposed in 1997, NEET became a re...

Putting an end to the dilemma over Uttar Pradesh Post Graduate Medical Entrance Examination (UPPGMEE), Principal Secretary Medical Education has on Monday clarified that the state will not cancel the examination. Students aspiring for post graduation in medical sciences have been demanding cancellation of UPPGMEE for the last one month and admissions in postgraduate seats of the state medical colleges through National Entrance cum Eligibility Test (NEET). A group of students demanding cancellation of UPPGMEE met Principal Secretary JP Sharma in this regard and were told that the examination will not be cancelled because it is being conducted as per the directions of the Supreme Court. NEET was a nation-wide examination conducted in November-December 2012, for admissions in postgraduate seats of medical colleges across the country. However, the NEET results have been withheld by the Supreme Court, after some states moved the court against the examination. The matter is still pend...

A  human liver  can now be kept "warm,  alive  and functioning" outside the human body for it to be transplanted into a new patient.  In a world's first, scientists from  Oxford University  and doctors from King's College Hospital have successfully "kept  alive " a donated human liver outside a human being and then successfully transplanted it into a patient in need of a new liver.  Currently, transplantation depends on preserving donor organs by putting them 'on ice' — cooling them to slow their metabolism. But this often leads to organs becoming damaged.  So far the procedure, which will be a major boon for countries like India that already face an acute shortage of donor livers for transplantation, has been performed on two patients; both are making excellent recoveries.  The innovation is a machine developed over 15 years at Oxford University that can preserve a functioning liver outside the body for...