The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Overseas medical degrees to be recognised

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 27, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Overseas medical degrees to be recognised

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: India will recognise postgraduate medical degrees offered by universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Singapore soon.

“In three months’ time, doctors from these English-speaking countries will be recognised here, enabling them to work in Indian hospitals. At the moment, only unilateral recognition has been accorded. We are talking with these countries to urge them to grant bilateral recognition to enable Indian medical degrees to be recognised abroad,” Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Anbumani Ramadoss told reporters on Sunday.

He was inaugurating the Dr. A. Ramachandran’s Diabetes Hospitals and India Diabetes Research Foundation.

India was moving from being the epicentre of the Big Three diseases — HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis — to the Big Five diseases — diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, mental health disorders, stroke and cancer. Educational policies had to be modified accordingly to cope with this and the Union Health Ministry was in talks with the Human Resources Development Ministry to make physical education a compulsory subject in school curriculum. Talks were also on with the Urban Development Ministry to make it mandatory for all public parks to have tracks for walking, to encourage physical exercise as a means to cope with diabetes. The prevalence of HIV/AIDS had come down in Tamil Nadu over the last three years, with Andhra Pradesh topping the list.

The Ministry had also written to all Chief Ministers and Vice-Chancellors of universities to ban the sale of junk food on campuses.

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