Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Rural service

The Union Health Ministry’s decision to make a year’s rural service compulsory for students of medicine is welcome. The nation is facing an acute shortage of doctors. Governments spend huge amounts of taxpayers’ money on training doctors for four-and-a-half years, followed by an internship of one year. Most of them start looking for greener pastures even while they are pursuing their graduation. They are even prepared to toil in non-medical jobs in the West. Given the scenario, mandatory rural service is absolutely necessary. For the move to have the maximum effect, doctors should live in their place of work.

Ushadevi & Bhaskara Rao,
Muscat

Will the government also take measures to curtail the top scorers of IITs from fleeing abroad? Is it not similar to doctors’ failure to serve the poor in the villages? Does not the government spend a lot of money on IIT graduates too?

P. Ashok Kumar,
Madurai

Like other professionals, doctors too are entitled to aspirations such as career growth and high standards of living. Already, the medical profession is losing its lure, thanks to the long course period and attractive job opportunities in other sectors.

Is it fair to thwart the ambitions of young doctors and force them to work in obscure locations, further discouraging youngsters from taking up the profession?

Bharat Ram,
Chennai

Though compulsory rural service sounds revolutionary to the common man, it will not bring about much change on the ground. Students, yet to register as doctors, are proposed to be posted in villages. Dr. Albert Schweitzer was a full-fledged doctor before he started his service in Gabon. When service becomes a compulsion, it ceases to be service.

E.J. Sreekumar,
Coimbatore

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