Doctors outside a medical college. (File picture)

New Delhi, June 11: Repeatedly ignoring government advice, the Medical Council of India (MCI) has armtwisted medical colleges into shutting the doors on thousands of postgraduate students, contributing to a scarcity of medical faculty, senior doctors have said.

The MCI has for years prevented colleges and teaching hospitals from accepting students pursuing DNB, a postgraduate qualification awarded by the government’s National Board of Examinations (NBE), which is equivalent to the postgraduate MD or MS courses.

Thousands of DNB-qualified candidates have been denied faculty positions because the MCI has denied equivalence between these parallel streams of postgraduate education, according to senior doctors in the country’s medical education hierarchy.

“We have a scarcity of faculty created by artificial obstacles,” said Kunchala Shyamprasad, vice-president of the NBE. “We could have had thousands of more faculty if the MCI did not have this attitude,” Shyamprasad told The Telegraph.

The scarcity of faculty is a major obstacle the government will have to tackle in its bid to increase seats in medical colleges pledged as part of the package to introduce 27 per cent reservations to Other Backward Classes (OBC).

In an effort to coax a correction in the MCI’s policy, the Union health ministry has sent a letter to the council, all universities, and government departments reiterating the equivalence of DNB with MD or MS for appointment of teachers and specialist doctors.

About 25,000 medical students graduate each year in India with MBBS degrees, but only 9,000 seats are available in the MD or MS courses offered in postgraduate medical colleges and teaching hospitals.

However, the NBE allows another 3,000 students to pursue the DNB programme in various fields of specialisation ? from paediatrics to cancer medicine to gynaecology in a network of approved hospitals nationwide. Less than 15 out of more than 100 medical colleges that offer the MD or MS postgraduate medical courses today accept candidates from the DNB stream.

Some 6,000 more postgraduate students might be accommodated in medical colleges or teaching hospitals if the MCI allowed them to accept DNB candidates, Shyamprasad said.

The MCI has argued that it cannot equate DNB with MD or MS because the DNB courses are conducted in non-teaching hospitals, while the MD or MS courses are pursued under qualified teachers. The MCI has also said facilities for basic sciences is non-existent in the non-teaching hospitals.

NBE officials as well as other medical faculty argue that the DNB programme provides superior hands-on training under experienced consultants in accredited hospitals.

“The NBE offers a fairer and more objective examination,” said Dr Martanda Valiathan, honorary adviser at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. “In the MD or MS courses, the examiners and the candidates come from the same institution. But candidates in a DNB course do not belong to the examiner,” he said.

“But there’s a turf war, and the MCI has refused to grant equivalence (to DNB),” Valiathan said.

“The trend worldwide is on hands-on training. The DNB is a postgraduate course best conducted in a hospital setting,” said Shyamprasad. “It’s unfortunate the MCI has tried to downgrade the DNB.”

The MCI had in 1998 ordered that only DNB candidates with prior teaching experience of one or two years should be considered for faculty positions.

Documents made available to The Telegraph show that the medical council has repeatedly ignored government orders sent over the past two years, asking the MCI to treat DNB as equivalent to MD or MS.

Earlier this year, the MCI decided that its stand of not granting permission for the DNB courses in teaching institutions “should be maintained in the larger academic interest and standards of postgraduate medical education”.

But in its letter sent recently, the health ministry has also revoked the requirement of DNB candidates to have teaching experience before they can be appointed as faculty.

“It’s a good move, long-delayed, but very good,” Valiathan said.