GULBARGA: The National Board of Examinations (NBE), which comes under the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, is planning to introduce a six-month certificate course for government doctors working in rural areas. The course will help hone their clinical and surgical skills and improve healthcare in government hospitals.

NBE executive director A.K. Sood told The Hindu here that doctors taking the course would be trained in super-speciality hospitals in areas such as clinical care, surgical care, accident trauma, obstetrics, paediatrics and anaesthesia. He said the course had been designed to overcome the poor quality of treatment in rural hospitals due to poor training of doctors posted there.

The training programme would focus on 16 states that had been included in the Centre's National Rural Health Mission.

Dr. Sood said the World Health Organisation (WHO) had agreed to provide teaching material for the course and also provide financial assistance for conducting seminars and workshops. The NBE had sought the Union Health Ministry's approval to start the course, he said.

Role of NBE

Dr. Sood said the NBE was established in 1975 after some countries, including the U.K. began derecognising medical degrees awarded by colleges India. It was given a mandate to offer postgraduate and post-doctoral degree courses matching international standards.

The NBE was also asked to fill the huge gap in the availability of postgraduate education in medicine since a majority of the 26,000 undergraduates coming out of medical colleges had no opportunity to do postgraduate courses.

There are only about 9,000 seats for postgraduate courses in medical colleges in the country.

He said that the NBE had introduced 58 postgraduate specialities in 550 hospitals and 14 post-doctoral courses.

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