Call to abolish mandatory rural service for MBBS

Trichy: Doctors association for social equality has called for the abolition of the one-year mandatory rural service for the MBBS students. They demanded the rollback of the union government’s proposal making exit test mandatory for medical students in a national seminar conducted by the Tamil Nadu Medical students association in Trichy.

Dr Ravindranath, general secretary of doctors association for social equality, said that every year 31,000 students passed out as doctors in the country.

The government was refraining from making permanent appointment of doctors in rural hospitals by forcing them to do a yearlong rural service. This would pave way for jobless health system, he alleged.

He said that union government was planning to consider it as an entrance test for the post-graduate courses in future. “This move would leave students focusing only on entrance test and they will not develop their clinical or surgical skills. It should not be made mandatory,” the doctor said.

Welcoming the Supreme Court order directing the government to set the fee for medical seats in the deemed universities, Ravindranath said that state government should give NEET coaching to plus one students to equip more number of students crack NEET.