New Delhi, July 11 :    New Delhi, July 11:  MBBS students will soon have a new internship course with a month-long training each in anaesthesia and paediatrics, two months each in general medicine and surgery and three months in preventive and social medicine. The health minister said a restructured medical internship course would help to fill in gaps in the reproductive health system. The system, at present, is weighed down, among other factors, by the non-availability of anaesthetists in the primary health care system. Making the announcement on the concluding day of the three-day population policy meeting, Union health minister C.P. Thakur said: 'The Nursing Council of India has reviewed the course content and training requirements of health workers and recommended that the present duration of training should be enhanced from 18 months to two years.' He said the training of doctors and para-medical officers at present was out of step with the objectives of the national health programme. On the world population day, policymakers in the governmental and non-governmental sectors today put their heads together and declared that the issue of reproductive health was inextricably linked with the overall health status of women. Though infant mortality rate has dipped, neo-natal mortality is still not under control - and it was the opinion of all that the health of the pregnant mother needed to be brought into focus. The more robust the mother, greater the possibility of the infant's survival, it was felt. The Centre, on its part, made it clear that the national population policy was against the use of coercion and holding out incentives or disincentives to keep the numbers down. 'We know some of the states are doing it. We will not be able to stop them. But the Centre is totally against it,' said the health minister. In Andhra Pradesh, chief minister Chandrababu Naidu has been freely doling out incentives to promote the two-child norm -- so has the Gujarat government. Nothing was said at the meeting that had not been said before. But the focus of the discussion at the national population meet was the dipping female sex ratio and a the soaring rate of female foeticide. 'An imbalance in the population is even more devastating than population explosion,' said health secretary A.R. Nanda. The Centre is planning to amend the Pre-natal Diagnostic Act to expand its scope and give it more teeth. 'We are in the process of finalising the amendments but they will not come in the forthcoming session of Parliament,' said Sabu George, an activist. But the overall situation is not hopeless. So believes Aloke Mukhopadhyay of the Voluntary Health Association of India. 'The Centre and some states at least are taking measures to improve access to health. Madhya Pradesh, for instance, has taken a paradigm shift in decentralising and handing over the health system to gram sabhas,'' Mukhopadhyay said. There is a growing realisation and an effort to implement the concept that reproductive health is not related just to contraception, but that it is essentially a convergence of health services and empowering women so that they can exercise a reproductive choice. This is why the government, in consultation with other associations of gynaecologists and paediatricians, has recommended an MBBS course that will gear doctors to tackle better the issue of reproductive health. 'The experts felt that a great deal of maternal and infant mortality can be reduced by improving obstetric care at the community level. It was suggested that several models of community-based care should be experimented with,' the health minister said.