India urges China to offer licenses to its medical students

India’s NMC conducts screening tests for citizens returning after obtaining the medical qualification awarded by any institution outside the country

China should ensure that the citizens of India studying in its medical colleges must be issued licenses to make them eligible to practice as doctors in the communist country, New Delhi has of late conveyed to Beijing.

New Delhi has conveyed to the government as well as the authorities of the medical colleges of China that the students from India enrolled in the communist country would not be allowed to take qualifying examinations on their return unless they could obtain licenses to practice as doctors in the communist country itself.

The Embassy of India in Beijing on Monday reminded the country’s students already enrolled or planning to get enrolled in the medical colleges in China that they would have to appear for qualifying examinations on return to practice as doctors.

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India’s National Medical Commission (NMC) conducts screening tests for citizens returning after obtaining the medical qualification awarded by any institution outside the country. Citizens with foreign medical degrees have to pass the screening tests to be eligible for registration as medical practitioners in the country.

The NMC on November 18, 2021 issued a gazette notification, unambiguously stating that foreign medical students must be “registered with the respective professional regulatory body or otherwise, competent to grant license to practice medicine in their respective jurisdiction of the country in which the medical degree is awarded and at par with the license to practice medicine given to citizen of that country”, the Embassy of India in Beijing pointed out in a press release on Monday.

It went on to add that New Delhi had conveyed to Beijing as well as authorities of the medical colleges that they should ensure that all students from India coming to China for clinical medicine programs were “educated, trained and facilitated” so that they could fulfil the above requirements of the NMC. “Any student, who joins for clinical medicine program in China after November 2021 and fails to obtain a license to practice as a medical doctor in China, will be rendered ineligible to appear for Foreign Medical Graduate Examination.”