The National Medical Commission (NMC) has issued a few recommendations to include the LGBTQIA+ community and its issues in medical education. An expert committee was formed by undergraduate medical education board to assess the inclusivity of the LGBTQIA+ community.
The recommendation include removing “sodomy” and “lesbianism” from unnatural sexual offences, making a distinction between sexual fetishes such as voyeurism, transvestism, exhibitionism, masochism or frotteurism, and mental disorders stemming from such atypical interests, and teaching that two-finger test for virginity is “unscientific, inhuman, and discriminatory.”
The committee has recommended modifications in the Competency-based Medical Education (CBME) curriculum. It has modified six modules for forensic medicine and two for psychiatry taught to undergraduate medical students. Major recommendations have been made to change the forensic medicine and psychiatric medicine subject topics.
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The psychiatric competency, the topic name, “psychosexual and gender identity disorders”, will be changed to “human sexuality, gender incongruence or gender dysphoria; gender non-conformity, differences of sex development, intersex, paraphilia and paraphilic disorders and sexual dysfunctions.”
The modified module on virginity test states that students will be trained on “how to apprise courts about unscientific basis of these tests if court orders it”, instead of “discussions on medico-legal importance of the hymen” that continued to be taught in medical courses despite the Supreme Court ruling it out years ago.
Instead of being taught about “psychosexual and gender identity disorders”, students will be asked to “demonstrate understanding” for issues such as myths and misconceptions concerning LGBTQ+ community and psychosocial stressor they face.
The apex medical education body of India has notified all principals, registrars and directors of medical institutions, colleges, boards in the country to take into account the recommendations given by the expert committee.
This is not the first time the NMC has worked towards modifying the curriculum of medical education in India. NMC in May 2022, removed the word unnatural from the classification of sexual activities and in 2021, NMC had ordered medical colleges and boards to change the CBME curriculum after a writ was issued to the Madras High Court regarding the same that scientific books should not be biased against the LGBTQ community.
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