PG Times

R aj Kumari Amrit Kaur AIIMS Diamond Jubilee Celebrations – a PIB Feature by Shri V. Srinivas* Rajkumari Amrit Kaur became the First President of AIIMS at the age of 67, a position she held from 1957 till her demise in 1964. Her contribution to the governance and institution building at AIIMS are legendary. The Princess of Kapurthala had her early education at Oxford University. She was awarded the Doctor of Laws by Princeton University in 1956. She joined the Mahatma’s Ashram in 1934 and served as his Secretary for 16 years. She spent three years in prison for participating in the Quit India movement. She became the first woman to hold a Cabinet rank in Nehru’s Cabinet and the President of the World Health Assembly in 1950. It can be said that without her visionary leadership, AIIMS would not have reached the heights of excellence that it has scaled over the past 6 decades to emerge as the premier Medical Sciences University of India. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur chair...

Guest article by Sanjeev Sanyal It is now widely accepted that India’s medical sector needs a new regulatory regime. Several studies have found glaring lapses in the functioning of the existing system under the Medical Council of India (MCI). The current system is arguably beyond repair and a committee headed by NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya has proposed to replace it with a new body called the National Medical Commission (NMC). A draft of the enabling legislation has been circulated for comments. In many ways the proposed institution will be a big improvement on the existing arrangement. The MCI is an unwieldy institution with 102 members — 35 nominated, 67 elected — who keep churning. In contrast, NMC will have just 20 members including the chairman, amember-secretary, eight ex-officio members and 10 part-time members. Moreover, the NMC will be backed by a permanent secretariat staffed by professionals. So, the new institution will be leaner but also have institution...

States, in their deliberations with the government's think-tank Niti Aayog, have pitched for more representation in the National Medical Commission (NMC), the new body likely to replace Medical Council of India (MCI) "Aayog held meetings with the states earlier this month and the state governments have expressed their opinion that they should get more say in the governing bodies under the NMC," a source said. The state governments feel that more participation in the working of NMC will help formulate policies and regulations, which are more broad-based and cater to aspirations of all the states, he added. A high-level committee headed by Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya has proposed scrapping the controversy-ridden MCI and replacing it with the NMC. Besides Panagariya, the panel, which is looking into the issue of poor regulation of medical education by MCI, includes Prime Minister's Additional Principal Secretary P K Mishra, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh...

With the  National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test  (NEET) becoming a hurdle to charging  capitation fees , private medical colleges across India have substantially hiked tuition fees, while the cost of medical education in government colleges remains the same. Tamil Nadu saw the highest jump in cost of private medical education. At Chennai's SRM Medical college, the tuition fee is now Rs 21 lakh a year or Rs 94.5 lakh for the four-and-a-half year  MBBS course , against Rs 10 lakh per annum last year. This does not include expenses on books and lodging. In  Katihar Medical College  in north Bihar, the annual tuition fee has been revised from Rs 8 lakh to Rs 12.5 lakh. In Delhi, at the Hamdard Institute of Medical Sciences, tuition fees in the management quota is up from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 18 lakh. In government colleges, the sums range from as little as Rs 9,000 for the entire MBBS course in Rajasthan to Rs 4.4 lakh in Punjab. While most priv...

NEET-PG shall be held in 86 test centers at 41 cities.

Q1. Who shall conduct the NEET-PG 2017? National Board of Examinations is the prescribed authority for conduct of NEET-PG for entrance to MD/MS/PG Diploma Courses in terms of Section 10 of the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956 as amended in 2016. Q2. How many test centres have been engaged for NEET-PG? NEET-PG shall be held in 86 test centers at 41 cities. Q3. What is the scheme of NEET-PG? NEET-PG shall be held as a Computer Based Test and shall comprise of 300 Multiple Choice Questions from the MBBS curriculum followed at medical colleges in India duly prescribed as per the Graduate Medical Education Regulation notified by Medical Council of India with prior approval of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India. Q4. What is the scope of NEET-PG? NEET-PG 2017 shall be a single eligibility cum entrance examination namely ‘National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for admission to Postgraduate Medical Courses’ for the academic session 2017 wh...

Exam on 11-12-2016.

PGI registration link now live: http://pgimer.applyforexam.com/index.php

The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the centre to take a call on framing a National Health Policy by 31 December. “In case the Union of India thinks it worthwhile to have a National Health Policy, it should take steps to announce it at the earliest and keep issues of gender equity in mind,” a bench comprising justices Madan B. Lokur and U.U. Lalit said. Apart from this, the apex court gave at least 14 other directives to the centre in a case regarding the issue of conducting ethical sterilization of men and women in camps or accredited centres. The ruling came on a public interest litigation filed by medical health activist Devika Biswas, drawing the court’s attention to a doctor in 2012 performing at least 53 sterilization procedures in 12 hours in the unsanitary premises of a school in Bihar’s Araria district. The court noted that people are usually not given any pre-procedure counselling and have no idea about the potential risks of undergoing sterilization. During the ...

The state government Wednesday informed the Bombay High Court that the state’s domicile rules, providing reservation of college seats to local students, must protect the interest of students from Maharashtra who cannot take admission in other states owing to similar policies there. It made the argument during a court hearing where applicability of such rules in private unaided medical colleges has been challenged. The selection list for MBBS and BDS courses in unaided private colleges as per the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) scores will only be published and finalised once the court passes orders in the matter. Mahatma Gandhi Vidyamandir’s KBH Dental College & Hospital and some students have challenged the domicile rules, questioning how they could be applied to private unaided colleges. “We are accountable to students of Maharashtra who are prevented from taking admissions in other states. We cannot reduce their pie further,” said Acting Advocate General...

Alliance of Doctors for Ethical Healthcare (ADEH), a national body of medics working to promote ethical practice, has criticized NITI Aayog's recently released draft bill and report on the National Medical Commission. These documents outline the regulatory framework being proposed by the think-tank to replace the existing Medical Council of India (MCI). "NITI Aayog's report and bill are a huge disappointment and have dashed the hopes that medical corruption linked with gross commercialization of medical education would be checked effectively. In fact, the think-tank is backing even more accelerated privatization and commercialization related to medical education in the country," said medical practitioner M R Mirajkar of ADEH. The doctors underlined that the process adopted by the NITI Aayog to draft these key documents appears to be minimally consultative. Health sector civil society networks and various doctors' organizations working on the issues of...

Guest article by Dr. Arjun Kalyanpur, CEO, Chief Radiologist and Chief Pusher,Teleradiology Solutions Teleradiology, or the transmission of medical images from one location to another for the purpose of interpretation by a radiologist, has been at the forefront of telemedicine since its inception, and has become its poster child as the most successful application of telemedicine that exists today. Studies conducted in the US in the early 2000s saw very rapid acceptance and utilization of teleradiology among radiology groups and hospitals (one study showed that utilization tripled over a short 4 year period from 2003-2007). The rest of the world is fast catching up. A study from Japan showed 69% increase in teleradiology utilization by Japanese hospitals from 2006 to 2012. And a European survey in 2011 showed that 65% of radiologists used teleradiology at that time, a number that can only have been expected to have increased since then. What explains the astronomica...

PGI Chandigarh Notification Jan 2017 session.

Nurses across the country started an indefinite strike on Friday, admist a spurt in chikungunya and dengue cases, resulting in chaos in hospitals. The agitation to press for a revision of pay scales and a hike in allowances prompted the government to warn of strict action, including termination of service. Led by the All India Government Nurses Federation, over 6,000 nurses were estimated to be on strike. Under the 7th Central pay commission, total emoluments of nurses in Central government hospitals, including allowances, range between Rs 57,000 and Rs 94,000 a month. In private hospitals nurses earn in the range of Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 while corporate or big hospital chains pay between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000, depending on seniority. "We are disappointed that they have decided to go on strike at a time when hospitals are struggling with patients suffering from chikungunya and dengue. We are trying to talk to them and get them back," health secretary CK Mis...

New Delhi:  In Odisha, a man slung his wife's body over his shoulder and carried it 10 km after being denied an ambulance on August 24, 2016. In Kanpur, a man's sick son died on his shoulder after being denied admission to a hospital on August 29, 2016. Such cases become visible when they get social media and television attention, but millions cannot access India's overburdened hospitals and inadequate medical facilities, a crisis illustrated by the fact that India is short of nearly 500,000 doctors, based on the World Health Organisation (WHO) norm of 1:1,000 population, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of government data. With more than 740,000 active doctors at the end of 2014 -- a claimed doctor-patient population ratio of 1:1,674, worse than Vietnam, Algeria and Pakistan -- the doctor shortage was one of the health-management failures cited by the report of a parliamentary committee on health and family welfare, which presented its findings on March 8, 2016....