Medical Council of India in need of complete reformation: Parliament panel report

MUMBAI: The Medical Council of India (MCI) is in need of a complete reformation, as corruption and lack of accountability threatens the medical education of the country, if unchecked this will lead to great social, financial and political cost to the country, according to parliamentary standing committee report on health.
The committee led by Ramgopal Yadav, an MP from Samajwadi Party, has pointed out to serious aberration of MCI’s functioning and has called for changes of “transformational nature”.

“The MCI as the regulator of medical education in the country has repeatedly failed on all its mandates over the decades,” the committee said in its report. “Game Changer reforms of transformational nature are the need of the hour and they need to be carried out urgently and immediately,” said.

There are three areas where the committee has recommended drastic changes to MCI — the setup of MCI as a regulatory body, the governance of medical colleges and corruption. The committee, to begin with, wants to bring diverse stakeholders in the governing body.

“If the medical regulator has to perform all its mandated functions in full measure and ensure that education in health discipline fulfills its social mandate, it needs a vibrant framework with the right kind of capacity,” it said.

The MCI’s composition is opaque, skewed and void of any diversity because only medical doctors exist in the council, according to the report. This does not enable enduring reforms in medical education and practice, it said.

The report noted that, to bring diversity in the council, it needs to bring stakeholders such as public health experts and social scientists, health economists, health NGOs with established reputation and legal experts.

On revamping medical colleges, the committee observed that the existing minimum standard requirements mandated by the MCI are “irrational and artificially rigid standards” that are an impediment to the establishment and expansion of medical colleges.

“The current system of inspections is flawed and opaque in the sense that there is no provision for constructive feedback and the whole procedure is oriented towards penalising rather than improving,” it said.

The committee also brought the health ministry under fire for not initiating reforms which have long been recommended. “Rather than seizing the opportunity to come up with a better Bill, the Ministry remained apathetic to the state of affairs and did not respond with vigorous corrective measures,” it said.

This report comes four year after a similar parliamentary committee report had called for a complete overhaul of the country’s drug regulator.