Medical students take out protest rally

Demand increase in PG seats and relaxation of rural posting norms

As a gesture to support ‘save the doctor’ campaign being held across the country, students pursuing medicine in various colleges took out a rally from J K Grounds to Gandhi square in the city.

The rally was taken out to urge the Union Health Ministry to equalize under graduation (UG) and post graduation (PG) medical seats across the country. In a release by the students they said that India lacked specialist doctors in the country due to inadequate number of PG seats. “... the disparity in the number of seats allotted for PG and UG students along with mandatory rural posting is affecting young doctors,” the release said.

The rally which was held under the aegis of Indian Medical Association and Association of Healthcare Providers India, was aimed at influencing policy makers and medical educational institutes in the country to increase the number of PG seats.

Medical students and graduates are struggling to get a PG seat. In the last PG entrance examination held under National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, over 90,000 doctors appeared to claim one of the 12,000 PG seats. “Adding to this, the one year compulsory rural posting as a pre-requisite to apply for PG course has worsened the situation.”

Increasing the number of PG seats will help in raising the number of specialist doctors in the country.

If steps are not taken to increase the number of PG seats, there will be a dearth of specialist doctors and surgeons in India, the release said.