The Indian Medical Association (IMA), Mangaluru branch, and various other associations of specialist doctors have strongly criticised the Union government’s move to replace the Medical Council of India (MCI) through the National Medical Commission and said the government cannot do away self-regulation of the profession.
Speaking to presspersons here on Wednesday, A. Amritha Bhandary, president, IMA, Mangaluru, said the Union government, through Niti Aayog, has posted the draft National Medical Commission Bill, 2016, on the Aayog’s website and invited objections to the same. She said organisations of different specialties of modern scientific medicine have decided to oppose the proposal in totality.
Self-regulationIMA member Srinivas Kakkilaya noted that every profession in the country is governed through self-regulation by an Act of Parliament. “The Union government claims that the MCI regulating medical professions and education results in conflict of interest. If that is the case, so would it be with other professions, including lawyers and the Bar Council of India, chartered accountants and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and so on,” he said.
In a release, IMA said that the draft Bill is based on the report prepared by a committee comprising of bureaucrats who do not have any background in medicine. The committee erred right from the beginning, by including all branches of allopathic medicine in the definition of medicine, as against the existing description of medicine which is concerned with modern scientific medicine or evidence-based medicine.
‘Discard old system’The Committee had also said that the present election process of appointing regulators is inherently saddled with compromises and the system must be discarded. IMA said, if that was the case, the government should have devised a fool-proof election system instead of entirely eliminating the MCI.
Dr. Kakkilaya questioned the reported statement of a joint Parliamentary Standing Committee which had stated that there has been unbridled corruption in the MCI. “If that was the case, the government should have slapped criminal cases against the concerned; eliminating the MCI is not the solution,” he said.
The IMA said every other country has similar self-regulatory bodies and supported Acts of legislatures concerned to govern different professions. The MCI, governed by the Medical Council of India Act, 1956, is on par with international practices and should not be scrapped.
Satish Bhat, another member of IMA, said the MCI’s decisions are not sacrosanct; they have to be approved by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare as well as the Union Cabinet as the case may be.
ProtestsDr. Kakkilaya said the professionals have resorted to different kinds of protests, including filing objections to the Bill, online campaigns and the like. If the government does not relent, the doctors would be forced to come on streets, he said.
