IMA urges Centre to adjust MBBS students returning from Ukraine in medical schools across India

By Shalini Bhardwaj
New Delhi [India], March 4 : The Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Friday wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya about the fate and future of all MBBS students admitted to Medical schools or colleges in Ukraine and now returning to India from the war-hit country after the situation turned out to be hapless following Russia's ongoing military operation in Ukraine.
It urged the Centre to adjust all evacuated Indian medical students in existing medical schools in the country through an appropriate disbursed distribution.
"The number of medical students who have sought admission to medical colleges/schools in Ukraine is substantial and they are at various stages of their progression. As a matter of setting prescribed rule an Indian student seeking admission to any foreign medical college is required to procure an eligibility certificate for the said admission from the then Medical Council of India now rechristened as National Medical Commission constituted vide National Medical Commission Act, 2019 repealing Indian Medical Council Act, of 1956," read a statement by IMA.
The Indian Medical Association further recommended, "All the evacuated medical education learners who are Indian Citizens and have procured admissions there upon seeking eligibility certificate from the statutory authorities in India and at various stages of progression there be adjusted as a onetime measure in existing medical schools in the country through an appropriate disbursed distribution keeping in mind the geographic locational interest of the said learner directing that the said incorporation in the concerned medical college being one time should not be taken as an increase in the annual intake capacity and should be permitted to go in for progression in the respective Indian Medical Schools for the remainder of their MBBS Course."
"This will also need the validation of certification which has been made by the competent academic authorities of the medical schools where they were originally admitted in medical schools in Ukraine whereby the progression of theirs' would be permissible in Indian Medical Schools," the letter read.
"Resultantly, on passing out they will be as good as Indian Medical Graduates and not Foreign Medical Graduates. This will not only be a great succour to saving all of them from their uncertain fate and future but would also go a long way in catering to a larger human cause in a most befitting manner," explained the IMA in its letter to Mandaviya.
"The analogy of the aforesaid proposition is drawn on the basis of explicit modality which is availed in the Indian context in case of closure of an ongoing medical college in India whereby the students already admitted thereat they are appropriately disbursed into other medical schools in India in terms of a structured procedure which is prescribed and the same is taken as a onetime exception not to be quoted as a precedence and construed as an augmentation or increase in the annual intake capacity of the add on admitting medical college in any manner," it added.