Sodomy and lesbianism are sexual offences while transvestism (cross-dressing) is a sexual perversion; the mandatory seven hours of disability competencies have been excluded from the foundation course — these are among the significant issues requiring correction in the recently released National Medical Commission’s (NMC) new Competency-Based Medical Education Curriculum (CBME 2024) guidelines for MBBS students.
CBME 2024 will supersede the earlier NMC guidelines on curriculum, and will be implemented from the MBBS batch of 2024-25.
Transgender and disability rights groups have protested against the revised curriculum and have said they would be writing to the NMC to urgently rectify the “errors’’, failing which they would write to World Federation for Medical Education to temporarily suspend the NMC’s recognition status.
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Speaking to The Hindu after the release of the new CBME 2024 curriculum, Satendra Singh, heading the Doctors with Disabilities: Agents of Change group, which works for the welfare for doctors with disabilities, pointed to the legal issues with the new curriculum.
“The NMC is in violation of the Transgender Persons Protection Act, 2019. After being admonished by the Madras High Court and Kerala High Court, the Commission issued a letter to all medical universities on October 13, 2021, instructing them to not approve unscientific, derogatory and discriminatory information on the LGBTQ community. Yet, under these new regulations, the NMC requires faculty to teach MBBS students in forensic medicine that sodomy and lesbianism are sexual offences and transvestism (cross-dressing) is a sexual perversion,” Dr. Singh said.
Moreover, the inclusion of disability rights was highlighted as a mandatory competency in 2019 by the NMC. “However, the Commission has now suddenly removed the mandatory seven hours of disability competencies from the Foundation Course in its new regulations, which violates the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPDA), 2016,” Dr. Singh added.
“Section 39 (2)(f) of the RPDA mandates the inclusion of the rights of persons with disabilities in the curriculum of universities, colleges and schools. Section 47 (1)(b) further requires the integration of disability as a component in all educational courses for university teachers, doctors, nurses, and paramedical personnel. The curriculum’s sole focus on the management of disabilities reinforces the NMC’s outdated and archaic emphasis on the medical model of disability rather than the human rights model of disability. Why must doctors from the disability and transgender communities repeatedly take the NMC to court to ensure the implementation of laws that are already mandated?’’ the group asked.
The NMC on its part has maintained that it has evolved the curriculum from the 2019 version, making it “more learner-centric, patient-centric, gender-sensitive, outcome-oriented and environment appropriate”.
It says undergraduate medical education programme is designed to create an ‘Indian medical graduate’ possessing the knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and responsiveness to function effectively as a physician of first contact for the community, while being globally relevant.
The NMC has said that teaching, learning and assessment may be carried out bilingually in Assamese, Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odiya, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu, along with the English language.
