PG Times

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently cancelled Johnson & Johnson India’s licence to produce cosmetic products at their Mulund plant. FDA’s order will come into effect from June 24.    According to FDA officials, the order was issued in a case dating back to 2007 when they found that 15 batches of Johnson & Johnson baby powder were sterilised by ethylene oxide, a known carcinogenic and irritant.    “While ethylene oxide can be used for sterilisation, the company did not bother to carry out a test after the process to check the amount of residue in the product,” said FDA joint commissioner KB Shende, adding that the company can appeal to the state government before the order comes into effect.     “The products are used for new born babies. It is must for the company to follow all measures,” said Shende adding that the traces of ethylene oxide, if any, should have been measured. The 15 batches in question consi...

Finally A Big Day for NEET-PG aspirants . All arguments came to an end . After CBSE lawyer's arguments, all senior counsels filed rejoinder to the MCI's arguments. Every senior counsel was given 2 -3 minutes to consolidate their points.  Mr Mohan Parasaran who appeared for private deemed universities said that MCI is just an autonomous body under central government and MCI doesnt have power to regulate examinations.  After hearing all arguments, the Bench reserved the judgement. As such the Bench didn't give any specific date for judgement. CJI asked for written submission from all the lawyers who have been left. KKV & Salve tried to speak but refused by CJI.  He said that all those who want to say anything now they should give in writing by Thursday. No more hearing in this case.  Final judgement is reserved.

CHENNAI: Close to a year after the Medical Council of India (MCI) made it mandatory for colleges to allot 4% of the total teaching hours to  sports  and extracurricular activities, including yoga, progress towards this end is glacial, even as the new academic year is due to begin in July. Unavailability of yoga teachers and no consensus over when to schedule the course is among the main reasons, say deans of medical colleges. "It isn't easy to find a yoga teacher for every medical college in the state. We haven't found one with the right qualifications yet. We couldn't undertake the recruitment process last year. Hopefully, we'll manage it this year," said Dr V Kanagasabai, dean, Madras Medical College. The Regulations on Graduate Education, 2012, released by MCI — the statutory body regulating medical education — has allotted nearly 4% of the total teaching hours in the first two years of MBBS to sports and extracurricular activities, inclu...

SURI: Relatives of a patient on Sunday went on a rampage for about an hour at Birbhum district hospital alleging negligence on part of the doctors. Three persons were arrested for damaging hospital property and roughing up government employees inside the hospital compound. It is learnt that a woman from Labhpur village was admitted with labour pain on Thursday. She then gave birth to twins but one of them was a still-born. Doctors said the second baby was premature - weighing only 700 gm - and could not be saved in spite of best efforts by the doctors. The mother and her baby were released from the hospital on Saturday. On Saturday morning, the woman's husband Sk Mahiuddin came to the hospital with some villagers. But in the evening, the woman's husband - Seikh Mahiuddin - came to the hospital with a gang of villagers and demanded an explanation from the doctors. They alleged that the second baby had died due to the negligence of the doctors. However, cops present ...

by  Akash Mathur & Ruchi Joshi We the medicos of Madhya Pradesh have started the fight against the corrupt system and have succeeded in getting our pre PG cancelled. In the light of recent evidence the biggest question is that we all are facing is  "Do we have to be criminals or do we have to posses an AK-56 to get our plight heard on a fast track in the apex court? With so much delay in the NEET PG results we feel virtually raped; if that can get us some attention from the authorities." We as doctors do not want to be academicians who will sit and wait for some competitive exam results. Our place as skilled individuals is the hospitals. And in a country with such a huge population there are plenty of people who are still not being able to receive primary health care and in our opinion it is absolutely inhuman to hold 90,000 doctors from serving them. Although we have complete faith in our judiciary still there are many questions which need to be answer...

by  Anuraag Jena NEETPG - the word is enough to demoralise any doctor trying for higher studies in India. Tests were held in on December. It has been over four months and god knows how much more time till the admissions start. To add to it, the Supreme court is taking case so infrequently it might be July before we might see our results. Ordinarily, by this time admission process is close to coming to an end. Students who don't score will have suffer as they have now wasted valuable time of 2nd year preparation plus next year pattern is still uncertain. This uncertainty has virtually broken the spine of doctors. It is a 'Life of WHY' for each one of us. Each day we are constantly refreshing SC pages to check if hearing starts or not only to end up disappointed in the evening that case was not taken. NEET UG got delayed because they knew it's uncertain. Why didn't MCI do the same to us? They should have discussed among all states before announcing a full ...

Dubbing a doctor a quack for administering anaesthesia despite not being qualified, the Maharashtra consumer commission has observed that no doctor can do a specialized job if s/he does not have the necessary qualification. The case pertains to a woman who died days after giving birth 10 years ago following anaesthesia-related complications.The commission relied on Supreme Court judgments which said unless the person holds a necessary qualification,he should not perform the job of the specialist. The Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission upheld a district forum order which found the doctors guilty of negligence.It directed gynaecologist Sujata Rathod and physician Vasant K Jog to pay the victims family Rs 6.6 lakh compensation. The commission observed that Rathod knew Jog did not hold either a post-graduate degree or diploma in anaesthesia,which is a mandatory qualification for an anaesthetist as per the Medical Council of India.  The commission ...

By  Pallavi Priyadarshini Visit a country of paradoxes. India has the largest number of medical colleges in the world (more than 350), and we get a significant number of medical tourists, a reflection of the high-level of medical expertise that we possess. However, a majority of our citizens have limited access to quality healthcare — less than half of our children are fully immunised. Similarly, the minimum of three checkups during pregnancy remains unavailable for half of our pregnant women. To understand this anomaly, we have to go back to the clinical settings where doctors avail training. Problems at the macro-level Controversies, discussions and conflicts surrounding the state of medical education in India are like the common cold — it keeps surfacing every now and then. The challenges that it often confront are that of poor government control over the accreditation process, lack of skilled faculty, curriculum with inconsequential detail, complicated nature of ...

The Supreme Court will hear the NEET PG case on April 30.  The vacation of Supreme Court will start on May 13 and the court will re-open on July 1. About 90,000 students have been affected by the delay of results. The delay has affected students do not know whether they are to give up their jobs and get a seat in medical school. The deadline for counselling is May 31. There was some speculation that this deadline could be extended depending on when NEET-PG results would be declared. Students had taken to streets expressing their frustration over the delay in results from February 2013. Fed up of the delay, some have now taken to protesting in towns and cities across the country.

Guest article by Moiz Mannan Medical aspirants in India are facing a tough time because of court cases and procedural delays in admissions to the coming academic session. For non-resident Indian (NRI) students, it is turning out to be quite a nightmare. Pending the Supreme Court’s final ruling on the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), there is total chaos particularly with regard to admissions to the medical (MBBS) and dental (BDS) courses in colleges across the country. NRIs are the worst sufferers because there already hangs a question mark on the seats set aside for them owing to rampant malpractices and fleecing. Following a notification published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary dated December 21, 2010, the Medical Council of India with the approval of the Central Government amended the regulations on Graduate Medical Education 1997 and made provision for a Single Eligibility cum Entrance Examination, namely, National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) ...

AHMEDABAD: Science students of Hindi-medium schools are at a loss. They have received the exam receipts for National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET), a common admission test for admission in medical colleges all over the country. Their exam centres have been allotted in far flung states like  Bihar , the nearest being Rajasthan. The NEET will be conducted across India on May 5. Nisha Rajput, a XII science student of a Hindi-medium school, has been granted exam centre in Patna. "It will take two days for me to reach Patna by train and another two days to return home. Since the Gujarat Common Entrance Test is scheduled on May 9, I will have to study while travelling", said Rajput. Kinjal Singh, another Hindi-medium science student has got her exam centre in Jodhpur. "This is heavy rush period due to summer vacations. My father has not got any bookings in train. I don't know how will I reach the exam destination", said Singh. Students are als...

The Medical Council of India has taken action against a group of physicians who reportedly appeared in an advertisement released by the hospital they were working in. It decided to remove their names from the Indian Medical Register/State Medical Register for 15 days for transgressing the Code of Medical Ethics. While the Medical Council of India Code of Medical Ethics makes it plain that no doctor can indulge in any advertisement to promote himself or his/her practice, doctors see the recent judgment as an “interpretation” of the rules. K.V. Babu, a Kerala-based doctor, who has championed the cause of medical ethics, says, “This ruling is very interesting.” He goes on to explain why: “While we all know that a doctor cannot advertise for himself or herself alone or together with other doctors, as per Section 6.1 of the MCI’s Code of Medical Ethics, here, we are being told that it is the duty of individual doctors to inform the hospitals that they would not be a part of any adver...

With the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Undergraduate (NEET-UG), for admission to medical and dental courses, being postponed in Karnataka in view of the Assembly elections, candidates here have raised fears that aspirants from the neighbouring State may gain undue advantage. Scheduled to be held on May 5 across the country, the first-ever such exam, NEET has been postponed in Karnataka to May 18. “The gap will give an unfair advantage to candidates from Karnataka as they will know the paper pattern and the quality of questions. It is all the more important because NEET is being held for the first time and its pattern is not yet known,” says U. Sampath Kumar, father of an aspirant. “This will lead to unequal competition.” Aspirants claim the postponement is also illegal. They say as per the notification, the exam should be conducted on a single day, and if it needs to be postponed or advanced it should be done so across the country. They say the CBSE has only been en...

SUPREME COURT OF INDIA Daily Cause List ( For 30th, April, 2013 ) CHIEF JUSTICE'S COURT                     HON'BLE  THE CHIEF JUSTICE                     HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE ANIL R. DAVE                     HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE VIKRAMAJIT SEN                     ----------------------------------                  [ THIS BENCH WILL SIT UPTO 2.55 P.M. ]                     ==================================        [ THE MATTERS IN WHICH LETTERS HAVE BEEN CIRCULATED MUST BE          MENTIONED AT THE FIRST SITTING OF THE COURT UPON DUE NOTICE ]                           MISCELLANEOUS ...