PG Times

India's tuberculosis nightmare could be much worse than feared. A new study analysing the sale of anti-TB medicines across India has estimated that there could be two times more drug-sensitive TB patients than currently assumed. While it was assumed that India's annual burden of TB cases stands at roughly 2.2 million a year, the study to be published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Thursday pegs this number at over 3.8 million in 2014. This excludes drug-resistant TB cases. The study, jointly done by the Indian government, the Imperial College of London and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, confirmed what has long been suspected: more Indian TB patients seek treatment in the private sector than the public sector. Dr Sunil Khaparde, who heads the Central TB Division and is an author of the Lancet study, said, "We realised the number of patients coming to the private sector were underestimated, but the new study looked at medicine sales an...

Scores of resident doctors at the AIIMS here today held a protest on the campus over their demands including those related to working hours and hostel facilities, and threatened to intensify their stir from Friday if these are not addressed.  Carrying placards and raising slogans like 'Heal the Healers', they took out a march from the coffee shop to the bungalow of the institute's director. "We have three pending issues, drawing of blood samples, which has been a nagging matter for long time. Drawing samples is the work of trained technicians and not doctors, and since we are also asked to prepare vials and barcode them, it leaves us with little time to attend to patients," General Secretary, Residents Doctors' Association, Dr Harjit Singh Bhatti said.  The other issues include additional hostels for resident doctors and fixing of duty hours, he said.  "Our hostels, we were told were supposed to be completed over two years ago, but the const...

THE TWO-DAY-LONG strike by more than 1,200 resident doctors of PGI to press their demands was called off by the Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) late on Tuesday night. This followed a three-hour-long meeting with the ARD representatives and senior faculty members, headed by PGI director Yogesh Chawla. ARD said that the strike was called off after their demands were accepted by the PGI administration during the meeting. However, there was resentment among a group of residents who did not favour calling off the strike. “We have called off the strike as our demands have been met. We have been given various deadlines by the administration regarding our demands,” Dr Seran Kumar Reddy, president of ARD, told Chandigarh Newsline late on Tuesday night. “From Wednesday, resident doctors will resume their duties.” However, the PGI administration didn’t invite the residents for any talks till late afternoon. Around 1,200 resident doctors had gone on a strike since Sunday night ...

A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court accusing an apex court-appointed Oversight Committee led by former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha of over-stepping its given job of monitoring the work of Medical Council of India (MCI). A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court led by Justice Anil R. Dave, in a judgment in May 2016, had invoked its rare and extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to set up a three-member committee, headed by Justice Lodha, to oversee the functioning of the Medical Council of India (MCI) for at least a year. The 165-page verdict had endorsed a Parliamentary Standing Committee report of March 2016 that medical education and profession in the country is at its “lowest ebb” and suffering from “total system failure” due to corruption and decay. The Committee, also comprises Professor (Dr.) Shiv Sareen (Director, Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences) and Vinod Rai (former Comptroller & Auditor General of India). In his wri...

SERVICES IN the northern region’s premier health institute — PGIMER — were hit Monday as more than 1,200 resident doctors went on a flash strike after one of them was assaulted by a patient’s attendant. The patient, a 72-year-old woman from Ludhiana, died during treatment late Sunday evening. The strike affected thousands of patients who came to PGIMER OPDs from various states including Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and  Kashmir . The situation looks set to continue as talks between hospital administration and doctors on Monday failed to end the strike. PGIMER has threatened to act against the doctors if they do not return to work on Tuesday. The hospital authorities announced that OPD registration would close at 9 am on Tuesday in view of the ongoing strike. On a normal day, OPD registration continues until 11 am. It was probably for the first time in the history of PGIMER that its main entrance gates were shut for more than two hours late Sunday night and p...

Who should draw the blood sample of a patient: the doctor or the nurse? There seems to be a tug of war between doctors and nurses over this with the administration failing to clarify the issue. Resident doctors have, in fact, gone ahead and declared they would stop doing it from August 26. "No resident will draw blood samples of patients or generate barcodes as it is the duty of the nursing staff. It is for the administration to make sure that the nursing staff adhere to their duties and that patient care as well as resident training are not compromised," AIIMS RDA wrote to the director on Tuesday. RDA general secretary Dr Harjit Singh Bhatti said resident doctors now have to generate barcodes too. "We end up spending most of our time in the morning drawing and sending samples alone. There is little time left to look at in-patients and addressing their grievances and we have to rush to OPD," he said. In the US and other developed nations, Dr Singh ad...

The doctor- engineer ratio keeps declining among younger people and falls to 15.7 for the 20-24 year age-group. It is commonly believed that more women opt for medicine while men go for engineering.  Economic reforms have been blamed by some critics for widening the gap between the rich and the poor in India. They have also created another divide: between doctors and engineers. According to the 2011 census, India has 35 doctors for every 100 engineers in the 60-plus age-group. The doctor- engineer ratio keeps declining among younger people and falls to 15.7 for the 20-24 year age-group. It is commonly believed that more women opt for medicine while men go for engineering. The data confirms this as the doctor-engineer ratio is higher for women across all age-groups. However, the fall in this ratio from the oldest to youngest age-cohorts has been much sharper among women. To be sure, the ratio was skewed in favour of engineers in the 2001 census as well. However, this gap i...

India's largest body of doctors plans to oppose a government move for reforms in medical education that would, among other initiatives, introduce a mandatory licentiate examination that all medical graduates would need to pass to practise medicine. The Indian Medical Association (IMA) will oppose the common licentiate examination proposed by a panel chaired by Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya in a draft bill seeking to establish a new regulatory system to govern medical education and practice, IMA officials said. "Such an exam will pose an unnecessary burden on our medical students - we are against this idea," Gundarlahalli Naganna Prabhakar, a surgeon in Tumkur (Karnataka) and the president of the Karnataka branch of the IMA, told  PG Times. About 45,000 medical graduates emerge each year from India's 300-odd medical colleges, and under existing rules, once they have cleared their final examination at the end of their course, they can regi...

The Supreme Court has upheld the regulation of Medical Council of India (MCI) to give incentive marks to doctors working in rural areas for getting admission to PG courses, saying it would encourage medical practitioners to opt for assignments in remote areas facing acute shortage of doctors.A bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said on Tuesday that the academic merit of a candidate should also reckon the services rendered for public good and there was nothing wrong in the regulation framed by MCI. It said marks obtained in the common entrance examination should not be the sole criteria for admission to PG courses in medical science. “The provision in the shape of Regulation 9 is to determine the merit of the competing candidates. Provision for giving incentive marks to in-service candidates is permissible in law; and thus the proviso to Clause IV in the Regulation must be upheld in larger public interest,“ said Justice Khanwilkar, ...

The tussle between doctors and the state over the control of medical councils continued after the Centre proposed scrapping the Medical Council of India and replacing it with the National Medical Commission, which will have only 10 per cent of its members from the medical fraternity. Doctors are up in arms over this decision, saying this is yet another step by the government to tighten its grip over medical councils by having its 'stooges' control their functioning even as the Centre has called for suggestions and oppositions to be sent in by August 31. "One of the major problems is that the new act calls for merely 10 to 15 per cent representation from the medical fraternity. The rest of the members will be non-doctors appointed by the government. How can laymen take calls on medical education?" asked Dr Shivkumar Utture, executive member of the Maharashtra Medical Council. Utture added that all of the members of the Medical Council of India were docto...

By Adv. Rohit Erande USG Report given carelessly amounts to unethical practice and thus costed Rs.15 lakhs to Drs.. (In my opinion, this case is yet again another reason to amend MTP Act) http://cms.nic.in/ncdrcusersWeb/GetJudgement.do… In a case of ANIL DUTT & ANR. V/s. VISHESH HOSPITAL, INDORE & ORS., the National Commission passed strictures upon the Radiologists / Sonologists for not adhering to . Hippocratic Oath ! Case of the Complainant. : 1. The Wife of the Complainant was under treatment of Doctors during her pregnancy. IT was contended that the concerned sonologists / radiologists gave wrong reports at both occasions after 20 weeks ,which resulted into serious consequences.   2. When the female-baby was born, she was found not fully developed & her left arm and kidney were missing and even lungs were not completely developed and had fused spinal cord. The foetal weight was only 1500 gm. 3. The other Doctors opined that due to wrong U...