3-year diploma in medicine: Committee suggests specific restrictions

Kolkata, May 16 (IANS) The 15-member committee, formed by the West Bengal Health Department to explore possibility of introducing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's proposal for a three-year diploma course in medicine in the state, is of the opinion that the new system cannot be introduced without imposing stringent restrictions on the area of activities of these diploma doctors.

Sources from the state health department said that the first condition is that there cannot be a creation of a separate medical cadre in the state other than the two existing cadres of Directorate of Health Service and Directorate of Medical Education Service.

The second restriction as suggested by the committee members, sources said, is that the diploma doctors will not provide birth and death certificates.

"These are the two areas of restrictions which all the members of the committee have agreed upon in its first meeting on Monday. Each member of the committee has been asked to submit their written opinion on this count in the next meeting of the committee after seven days," a senior official of the state health department said on condition of anonymity.

Prominent faces from the city's medical fraternity like noted maxillofacial surgeon Srijon Mukherjee feel that there should be some additional restrictions on the diploma doctors. According to them, certain areas of treatment should be restricted for such diploma doctors and there should be a proper monitoring system to ensure that they never cross the line under any circumstance.

"Secondly, the operations sphere of such diploma doctors should be restricted only to the primary health centres," Dr Mukherjee told IANS.

Since the chief minister suggested the introduction of a three-year diploma course in medicine last week, the proposal faced severe opposition from the medical fraternity in the state, who said that the critical healthcare services involving life and death of patients cannot be left open to such experiments.

Doctors also apprehend that if the proposal is implemented, it will lead to mushrooming of private institutes offering such diploma courses whose "products" would never be capable of treating and healing people.