The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Protest against new rural course

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Sunday, Jan 23, 2011
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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Protest against new rural course

Staff Reporter

Thiruvananthapuram: Protest demonstrations and dharnas were organised by doctors and medical students in all district headquarters on Saturday, following a nation-wide call for protest by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) against the Union Health Ministry's decision to implement the three-and-a-half-year Bachelor of Rural Health Care course and against the proposed Clinical Establishments Bill.

In Thiruvananthapuram, doctors and medical students marched to the office of the Director of Medical Education and staged a dharna. The State leaders of the IMA addressed the gathering.

The IMA said that the Centre's decision to go ahead with the Bachelor of Rural Health Care course, supposedly intended to provide more medical personnel for the rural areas, would create much confusion in the medical education sector and affect the health care sector.

When there were discussions on the one side about the duration of the undergraduate medical course and whether it was enough to cover the vast area of medicine and new medical technologies, it was a retrograde step that the government was thinking about a short-term medical course, only for treating the rural poor, the IMA said.

The said rural medicine course would split the doctors into two classes and also divide the population as the privileged and the not-so-privileged class of citizens. The IMA was also protesting against the proposed Clinical Establishments Bill, several provisions of which were not practical to be implemented.

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