NEW DELHI: The British Medical Journal (BMJ) has called for action over illegal payments to India's private medical colleges. The latest issue of the journal has an article on capitation fees in India's private medical colleges which talks of fundamental reforms needed to tackle corruption in the admission process.
Action is urgently needed to tackle the illegal but seemingly common practice of paying huge fees for admission to India's private medical colleges, warns the special report in the BMJ. Yet another article in the journal suggests that the international community might be able to help tackle the problem by barring Indian students of private medical colleges that allow admission through capitation fee from training jobs abroad.
Speaking to TOI, Dr Samiran Nundy, chairman of the department of surgical gastroenterology and organ transplantation at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital says that with increasing number of candidates paying to get into medicine the quality of graduates was being compromised. He adds that he knows candidates who believed that if they could pay to get a seat, they could also pay to get through the course.
Dr Nundy feels that a common entrance test for admission, as is happening for engineering colleges, combined with an exit exam like the US Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) conducted by an independent body could at least ensure a minimum standard for students who become doctors. The USMLE website describes the licensing exam as a three part examination meant to assess a physician's ability to apply knowledge, concepts, and principles, and to demonstrate fundamental patient-centered skills, that are important in health and disease and that constitute the basis of safe and effective patient care.
In a personal view article in the journal, Dr Sanjay Nagral of the Department of Surgical Gastroenterology in Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre, Mumbai,blames the government for the malaise of corrupt private medical colleges. "The state, by not opening more colleges, has created a space for private colleges," says Dr Nagral in his article titled, 'We need to discuss India's reliance on private medical colleges'. He goes on to state that India's medical profession was too entangled in these institutions to offer substantial resistance to their growth and sleaze. Dr Nagral says it might be possible for the international medical community to help by barring students from such colleges from taking training jobs abroad. Whether such a move, which may hurt students more than the institutions, is feasible or effective remains to be seen, he adds.
According to the BMJ article a recent report in the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy ranked the education sector second in a list of black money generators in India. It is estimated that capitation fees paid to professional colleges last year amounted to more than Rs 6000 crore. Despite several judgements of the Supreme Court declaring that charging capitation fees is illegal, the practice continues unabated.
