New Delhi, Feb. 5: India’s apex regulator of medical education today unveiled an alternative health education course to create rural healthcare providers who will remain tied to villages for at least five years after they graduate.

The Medical Council of India (MCI) said the Bachelor of Rural Health Care (BRHC) — a shift from an earlier proposal for a Bachelor of Rural Medicine and Surgery (BRMS) — would involve three-and-a-half years of study and six months of internship. (See chart)

Senior MCI officials said the BRHC course would be open only to candidates from notified rural areas, and that its graduates would be allowed to deliver health services only in rural areas, at least for the first five years.

“They will receive a one-year licence that will be renewed every year for five years on condition that they remain in the rural area of their states,” said Ved Prakash Mishra, chairman of the MCI’s academic cell.

What happens after five years has been left undefined, though it’s unlikely they will ever be allowed to work in urban areas.

“After five years, an individual state may decide whether it wants to retain their services in rural areas. I expect the earliest BRHC course to begin by August 2011 for the academic year 2011-12,” Mishra said.

The BRHC graduates will be entitled to provide limited diagnostic and treatment services, less than what an MBBS doctor is authorised to provide, said Mishra. “Their skills would cover only 60 per cent of those of an MBBS doctor.”

A campaign by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), a doctors’ body, against the alternative health education plan appeared to fizzle out today after senior officials of the association met those of the MCI at a two-day conference of medical educationists.

“We’re convinced, now that it has been made clear to us that the graduates of this programme will be able to practise only in health sub-centres and primary health centres, and nowhere else,” IMA national president Goparaju Samaram told The Telegraph. India’s 145,000 health sub-centres do not have a single doctor but are attended by nurses.

Samaram said the change in nomenclature — from BMRS to BRHC — too helped change the IMA stance. “We have called a meeting of senior IMA members on February 15. We’ve asked (MCI president Ketan) Desai to address them and explain this. We do not expect problems from our members,” he said.

The course will be offered in medical schools that are to be set up next to district hospitals with at least 150 beds.

“The states will have to decide for themselves where the medical schools will come up, but we would prefer to see them in districts which have no medical colleges,” MCI president Desai said.

He said the states would need to create mechanisms to register the graduates of the course. Chhattisgarh, Assam and Bengal have already passed legislation to introduce rural health courses.