NMC Scheme for Ukraine, China Returned MBBS Students 'Leaves 99% in Limbo': Tharoor

Medical students who returned from Ukraine, China and got degrees by June 30 will be allowed to sit for the Foreign Medical Graduate Exam (FMGE), Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has said in a letter to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor. After qualifying the FMGE, the students will be required to undergo a Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship (CRMI) for two years instead of the existing one year, as per the NMC scheme.

That, however, leaves “99 per cent of them in limbo,” said Tharoor. Sharing the letter on social media platform, Twitter, the MP wrote, “Just received this letter from Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya responding to my raising the issue of the predicament in which Indian medical students evacuated from Ukraine find themselves. I’m afraid it leaves 99 per cent of them in limbo.”

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The health minister, in the letter, stated that the matter was examined in consultation with the National Medical Commission (NMC). The foreign medical students, and graduates are either covered under “Screening Test Regulations, 2002” or “Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations, 2021.”

“There are no such provisions in the Indian Medical Council Act 1956 and the National Medical Commission Act, 2019 as well as the Regulations to accommodate or transfer medical students from any foreign medical institutes to Indian medical colleges,” the letter read.

As per directions by the Supreme Court, the NMC in a notice dated July 28,  devised a scheme, under which Indian students who were in the last year of their UG medicine course, had to leave the institute due to Covid-19 or Russia-Ukraine conflict and subsequently completed their studies, have been granted certificate of completion of course or degree by that institute on or before June 30. Such candidates will be allowed to appear in FGME, the letter added.

“Thereafter, upon qualifying the FMG examination, such foreign medical graduates are required to undergo Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship (CRMI) for a period of two years to make up for the clinical training which could not be physically attended by them during the undergraduate medicine course in the foreign institute as also to familiarise them with the practice of medicine under Indian conditions. Foreign medical graduates will be eligible to get registration only after completing the CRMI of two years,” said Mandaviya.

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