Southern States - Andhra Pradesh   

Medicos to go on strike from tomorrow

By Our Special Correspondent

VIJAYAWADA DEC. 10. The Andhra Pradesh Junior Doctors Association has given a call to all undergraduate and postgraduate medical students studying in the 10 Government medical colleges and all junior doctors to go on an indefinite strike from December 12 to press for scrapping 3 per cent self-finance seats in MBBS and 25 per cent seats in PG courses under college development quota.

The association has criticised the privatisation and commercialisation of medical education and health care delivery system.

At a meeting of the students of the Siddhartha medical college held here today, Sreenivas, general secretary of APJDA, said that allotment seats to those who can pay higher tuition fee amounted to reservation for the rich and so against the spirit of the Constitution, which envisaged reservations only to socially backward sections of society. The reservation denied seats to meritorious students belonging to poor and middle-classes. "The Government has money to distribute caps during Janmabhoomi programmes costing Rs. 300 crores but no funds to improve hospitals providing medical care to the poor," he said. The Government is shirking its responsibility of providing free education and health to people. It had permitted the Hospital Development Societies to take bank loans to create infrastructure facilities without any counter guarantee from the Government. If the societies failed to repay the loan, the hospitals would become bankrupt and get closed, he feared.

The Government medical colleges lost 270 MBBS seats because they did not have adequate staff as per MCI norms. The Health Minister, Kodela Sivaprasada Rao, had promised to fill 700 teacher posts within two weeks. Though the promise was made four months ago, no action had been taken till now. Similarly, the Government was not showing interest in introducing residential system to provide medical service to the poor round the clock as was being done in northern states, he said.

The association demanded filling of MBBS seats on the basis of EAMCET rank and charging the uniform fee structure in private and Government medical colleges. It opposed 25 per cent seats under B Category (tuition fee Rs. 2 lakhs per year) and 25 per cent under C category (Rs. 20 lakhs for five-year course). Besides, 3 per cent seats are filled under management quota charging Rs. 6 lakhs per year. "This is nothing but selling medical education and it adversely affects health care quality in the years to come,'' Dr. Sreenivasan feared.

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