PG Times

TIMES VIEW  Don't play with lives Although the  Supreme Court  has left it to the Centre to decide whether there should be reservations in  super-speciality posts  such as those at  All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) , implementing such quotas will be wrong. Super-speciality posts, especially in medicine, require an exceptional  degree of expertise and excellence that cannot be compromised. This is all the more so because such medical specialists are in the profession of saving human lives. Their patients expect the very best of medical care. Quotas here would dilute the quality of service and possibly lead to unfortunate accidents. By its very definition a specialist is a professional who possesses knowledge and skills beyond the ordinary. In fact, merit is an automatic prerequisite for such a post. Naturally, all professionals in any given profession cannot become specialists. This fact is sufficient to exclude super-s...

The huge demand for Medical PG seats in Andhra Pradesh has brought in great fortunes in disguise for private medical colleges as they are charging as much as  Rs. 1.80 crore to  Rs. 2 crore under the management quota. Huge gap between the demand and supply of medical PG seats in the state has given a big boost for the managements of private medical colleges as they are charging not less than  Rs. 2 crore for a PG radiology seat. Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s recent order to issue proper procedural guidelines for admission of MBBS and PG seats under management quota, the state government is yet to issue any formal systematic procedure for the private medical colleges to follow for filling up the medical and PG seats. Taking this as advantage the private medical college managements in the state have already started booking the PG seats even as the admission entrance test is scheduled in March this year. There are about 2431 Post Graduate (PG) seats in eight gover...

The  Supreme Court  on Thursday put the ball back in the Centre's court on the contentious issue of factoring in reservation in appointments to faculty posts in  All India Institute of Medical Sciences  saying constitution benches of the court had repeatedly and concurrently warned against reservation at super-specialty level.  A constitution bench comprising Justices H L Dattu, S S Nijjar, Ranjan Gogoi, M Y Eqbal and Vikramjit Sen in its clarification said, "It is for the Centre to take a decision whether there should be reservation in super-specialty posts." This will open the window for the government to provide reservation as a criteria for appointment to AIIMS faculty positions.  The Centre had sought a review of the apex court's July 18, 2013 judgment which appeared to have blocked such reservation in AIIMS faculty posts. It had said, "There were certain services and posts where either on account of the nature of duties attached to them...

WUS Health Centre Delhi  has invited application for filling up the Medical Officer / MO posts on contract basis.Those who are interested in career in Delhi University can apply for recruitment to these jobs as follows - Part Time Medical Officer / MO  – 06 posts Qualification  - MBBS  Upper Age Limit  - 35 years Salary  - Rs. 27,600 per month Selection Method  - Selection of the candidates will be on the basis of interview How to apply  - Interested candidates need to send their application complete in all respect in prescribed format alongwith all needed documents at the following address – Chief Medical Officer,WUS Health Centre,University of Delhi,Delhi – 110007 Last date for application submission  -  January 21,2014  at 01:00 PM For detailed advertisement click on the following link -  http://du.ac.in/fileadmin/DU/students/Pdf/du/advt/2014/10012014_HealthCentre_MO_Advt.pdf

When touch did not work for newlyweds Piya and Hitarth, the couple went for touch therapy wherein the focus should be to touch and experience each other without focusing on intercourse and orgasm!      The couple sought treatment for Un-Consummated Marriage (UCM) after Hitarth reported failure to perform in the bed.      Experts say that touch therapy or ‘Sensate Focus’ is a key therapy devised by Masters and Johnson for couples with UCM. It aims at increasing personal and interpersonal awareness of self and the other’s needs. Each participant is encouraged to focus on their own varied sense experience, rather than to see orgasm as the sole goal of sex.      “Sensate focus is a term usually associated with a set of specific sexual exercises for couples or for individuals.  Majority patients respond to this in the third week of therapy as the anxiety to perform reduces,” says Dr Paras Shah.   ...

Geriatric care is not a depressing affair for 50 of the 70-plus senior citizens in Mumbai's north-western suburbs. Rather it has an  exciting technological edge to it. They are enrolled in a pilot project with Nanavati Hospital's telemedicine programme which allows doctors to remote-monitor their health. From pulse rate to ECG to lung function, their vital parameters are transmitted in real time, thanks to a made-in-India kit that costs Rs 1.25 lakh.  Tech is, it would appear, in a takeover mode in the field of medicine. The first thing you acquire in hospitals these days is a smart card. It's essentially your file number in an electronic avatar, allowing the hospitals and their doctors to instantly recall your medical history at a future date. At specialty clinics, you are likely to be handed a computer tablet to browse through health information before meeting the doctor.  Mobile-based healthcare apps that allow people to keep tabs on their body are alr...

The World Health Organisation is set to officialy declare India a polio free nation soon as no polio cases have been detected in the country for the past three years. India celebrates the third anniversary of being polio free on January 13, the most successful public health story of the past decade. However, the experts are warning against complacency. The threat of cross-border importation still remains very real as Pakistan still records many cases of polio. WHO's declaration comes as a remarkable achievement for a nation that saw more than one lakh babies crippled every year. Until 2009, India accounted for more than half the world's polio cases. "The world thought that it would be very difficult for India to eradicate polio," said NK Arora of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI). In 2011, Rukshsaar from Howrah in Bengal, who was then 2 years old, was the last polio case to have been detected in India. "I regret not get...

Even as the Aam Aadmi Party proposes to reserve college seats in Delhi exclusively for locals, the Congress government in Karnataka has decided to introduce a new stringent 10-year domicile condition on aspirants for postgraduate medical and dental seats in colleges in the state in an effort to ensure that more local students gain admissions to PG courses. Medical education minister Dr Sharan Prakash Patil, while announcing the admission process for PG courses for the 2014-15 academic period here Friday, said the government has tried to ensure that more students from Karnataka get access to the 1010 government quota PG seats in the medical and dental streams for the academic year. “A 10-year domicile condition is being introduced for admissions to government quota PG seats this year to protect the interests of local students. Previously, there were no domicile conditions and the majority of seats was being garnered by outsiders,’’ the medical education minister said. Under th...

The postgraduate medical and dental entrance test for State government seats will be held from February 11 to 15. This time, the National Board of Examination will hold the entrance test for the State seats and the counselling will be conducted by the Karnataka Examinations Authority. This will be a computer-based test, Medical Education Minister Sharan Prakash Patil announced here on Friday. The minister said until now, the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) used to conduct the exam. However, this year, RGUHS expressed that it could not continue conducting the exam. Also, there have been several complaints about the RGUHS-conducted entrance test, he said. In addition, from 2015-16, students need not write a separate test for the State government seats and instead, they would have to write only the All India Post Graduate Medical Entrance Examination (AIPGMEE).  Apart from this, the State has sent a proposal to the Centre to make Kidwai Hos...

The state cabinet on Thursday gave the green signal for homoeopathy doctors to prescribe allopathy medicines-provided they undergo a year-long certification course in pharmacology. The state has around 62,000 homoeopaths who could benefit from the decision,but allopathy practitioners made their uneasiness known immediately.The Indian Medical Associations Maharashtra chapter is,in fact,preparing to move the court against the cabinet decision.An MBBS student learns pharmacology in the initial period of the fourand-half-year-long course. They have three years,including their internship period,to familiarise themselves with pharmacology.So,how can a homeopath learn it a period of a year asked Dr Jayesh Lele,secretary of IMAMaharashtra.Homeopaths first made a plea to allow combined practice almost three decades back.Their fellow practitioners in Ayurveda and Unani are allowed to prescribe allopathy medicines.

Pending for nearly two years, AIIMS mission to provide free of cost generic medicines to its patients visiting the OPD may finally see the light of the day when such a pharmacy starts functioning by this month-end. "The pharmacy was supposed to start on January 1 but it got a bit delayed as we were arranging the place where the store will come up. Patients who are treated in the OPDs will be given free medicines on the basis of prescriptions by doctors of the hospital," Medical Superitendent D K Sharma said.  The store will be run by the central government's HLL Lifecare Limited and will be set up in the place where the earlier private pharmacy was being run and was closed in November 2013 due to irregularities.  Doctors have been instructed to prescribe only generic medicines to the patients and have been directed not to write the brand name of the medicines. A committee has been formed to keep a watch on the quality of the medicines. The list o...

The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved recommendations for increasing MBBS seats by 10,000 in recognised government medical colleges in the country. At present, there are around 50,000 MBBS seats across the country and the government is keen to increase them to address the issue of shortage of doctors. The current doctor-patient ratio is 1:2000 to 1:1000. The central assistance share under the proposal will be to the tune of Rs 8,457.40 crore and the state/ UTs share will be of Rs 2,513.70 crore. At present, there are around 50,000 MBBS seats across the country. The government wants to increase to improve the The Centre is aiming at increasing the MBBS seats across the country to produce more doctors to help reduce the disease burden and work in the unserved areas of the country, especially in the rural hinterland. A Health Ministry proposal to set up 58 new medical colleges in states with central assistance and upgradation of district hospitals had earlier been approve...

From the academic year 2015–16, postgraduate (PG) medical seat aspirants in Karnataka will join students from 10 other States in writing the All India Post Graduate Medical Entrance Examination (AIPGMEE) for admissions to both the State and national quotas. Karnataka will be the 11th State in the country to use the national entrance test for the State quota admissions as well. Confirming this, Rashmi V., Secretary, Medical Education, said the State government initially wanted to implement the plan for the academic year 2014–15. However, the date for the exam got advanced due to which the implementation was postponed to the next year, Minister of State for Medical Education Sharanprakash R. Patil said. For the AIPGMEE 2014, Karnataka, along with Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh, Goa, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal, have not consented to the Na...