RSS-affiliated body urges Centre to scrap mandatory cough syrup export tests
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New Delhi: RSS affiliate Laghu Udyog Bharati (LUB), which supports the small-scale industry, has urged the government to drop the requirement of compulsory testing of cough syrups at a government-approved laboratory before exports, stating that it leads to delays and increased cost.India made the testing compulsory following reports that linked the death of several children in Gambia to "made in India" cough syrups."For the manufacturers and exporters, these are areas of concern as it results in potential delays and increased costs, particularly for export shipments," LUB all India general secretary Om Prakash Gupta wrote in a letter dated May 10 to union health minister JP Nadda He requested the minister to "provide a viable solution" addressing the concerns of the pharma industry.According to the LUB, the testing procedure often takes 45 days and the testing fee of '25,000 per batch is "quite hefty".It also sought exemption from testing for exporters of other syrups, suspensions, dry syrups, tablets, injections and infusions as there had been no critical complaints in the past two years.In May 2023, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade notified that for exports, cough syrup manufacturers must produce a certificate of analysis from a government-approved laboratory.This followed incidents where India-made cough syrups imported into Gambia were allegedly found to be contaminated with diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol, resulting in an acute kidney injury cluster among children.
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The Print
5 hours ago
- The Print
Once brought in as ‘historic reform', National Medical Commission is showing same symptoms as predecessor
NMC comprises 33 members, a chairperson, 10 ex-officio members, and 22 part-time members. In addition, there are four autonomous boards to support its functioning—for undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) education, medical assessment and rating, and ethics and registration. What was considered the most appealing feature of the new medical education regulator was that its members would be 'selected' on the basis of 'merit'. New Delhi: In 2020, the constitution of the National Medical Commission (NMC) was hailed as a ' historic reform ' in the field of medical education and the practice of medicine. It replaced its predecessor Medical Commission of India (MCI), a network of elected representatives set up in 1933 and governed by Indian Medical Council Act, 1956, which had come to be viewed as a den of corruption, inefficiency and arbitrariness. 'Men and women with impeccable integrity, professionalism, experience and stature have been now placed at the helm to steer the medical education reforms further,' the Centre had said, announcing NMC's inception on 25 September, 2020. However, nearly five years later, a massive 'scandal'—involving senior NMC officials, some from the Union health ministry and a former University Grants Commission head—has been unearthed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and many suspect it is just the 'tip of the iceberg'. The allegations being probed include unauthorised sharing of classified regulatory information, manipulation of statutory inspection processes, and widespread bribery to secure favourable treatment for private medical colleges—reminiscent of the MCI era. The episode has once again triggered passionate debates on the commission's functioning, with doctors and medical experts telling ThePrint that NMC has not been able to deliver on its promises. Many point out that NMC has been unable to successfully perform any of its stipulated 'key functions'—streamlining regulations, rating of institutions, raising focus on research, introducing a national licentiate examination after MBBS course, creating an all-India register of doctors, and preparing guidelines for fee regulation by private medical colleges. Neither has it been able to develop standards for Community Health Officers with limited practicing licence, and no MBBS degrees, providing primary healthcare services in rural areas, those in the fraternity rue. Additionally, many doctors anonymously express concerns about the growing influence of the RSS-backed National Medicos Organisation (NMO) on the functioning of the NMC, and the alleged religious agenda. Also Read: Health diagnostics is a game of 'molecules & money'. Amazon has just entered the race 'Bureaucratic & political interference' According to the previous national president of Indian Medical Association Dr R.V. Asokan, NMC was 'never meant to perform'. 'It was meant to be its master's voice, which it is. The expectation was that it should perform as an arm of the government, favouring medical colleges at the cost of quality in teaching and training, and promoting mixopathy and crosspathy (integration of modern medicine with alternative medicine), and it it faithfully doing it,' Dr Asokan told ThePrint. IMA—the largest network of doctors in the country—had fought tooth and nail against the constitution of the NMC, arguing that MCI was a democratic body duly elected by the entire medical fraternity of the country, and that it deserved a clean-up, not extinction. Dr Ravi Wankhedkar, another former IMA president, said that the only 'achievement' that the NMC can showcase is the massive expansion of UG and PG seats, and the number of medical colleges coming up at the cost of alarming dilution of infrastructure and faculty norms, and declining teaching standards. Government statistics show that India had 731 medical colleges offering 1,12,112 MBBS seats, and 72,627 PG or PG-equivalent seats in medicine in the 2024-25 academic session. According to health ministry data, this was a substantial hike from 387 colleges, 51,348 MBBS seats and 31,185 PG seats before 2014. 'But so poor is the quality of teaching and learning in medical colleges these days that we will be extremely wary about getting treated by the doctors passing out of the current system. I am really concerned about what happens to patient safety and healthcare services in this country once the new generation of doctors takes over,' Dr Wankhedkar told ThePrint. Yet, he added, the benefit that the government is getting out of this is that they can boast about opening medical colleges and increasing the number of seats in medicine to 'score political points'. Asked about the many such observations about the NMC, the body's outgoing chairman Dr B.N. Gangadhar told ThePrint that while he respected his colleagues' opinion, given that the expectations from the commission were huge, it had done a 'reasonably fair job thus far'. 'Several changes have been brought out, including massive expansion of medical colleges, number of UG and PG seats. Implementation of these changes will take time. It's all a work in progress,' he said. Incoming NMC chairperson Dr Abhijat Sheth, appointed last week, is set to take charge soon. Dr Gangadhar also described the announcement of new teaching recruitment norms this month, allowing specialists in non-teaching hospitals to be able to work as teachers, as a move aimed at correcting the biggest problem plaguing the sector—faculty shortage. But many have argued that this will further dilute teaching training standards. A senior NMC functionary, whose term ended two years ago, confirmed the assessment that others in the medical fraternity have made. 'We tried to do many things, but the bureaucracy harassed us like anything. The intent of setting up NMC was right, but the way things are, I see little hope. There is too much political and bureaucratic interference,' said the ex-NMC member, requesting anonymity. ThePrint also reached Union Health Secretary Punya Salila Srivastava via email for a comment on these allegations. This report will be updated if and when a response is received. 'Reforms' that turned out to be non-starters The NMC Act of 2019 had envisaged the National Exit Test or NExT as a singular qualifying examination to replace three existing exams in the field of medicine—the final MBBS exams, the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for PG seats (NEET-PG), and the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE) for foreign graduates to practice medicine in India. The Act had stated that qualifying in NExT would be a must—within three years of the Act getting notified—for every MBBS graduate to receive a licence to practice medicine in the country. Later, in 2023, the NMC had announced that from 2024 onwards, the NExT exam would be conducted twice a year, only to face stiff resistance from medical students across India forcing the regulator and the government to put the idea on hold. In a representation to the government in 2023, the IMA had said that the group, along with various networks of medical students, rejected NExT in toto for its 'anti-student content'. In January last year, the NMC sought public feedback on the feasibility of the test, indicating that it was unsure about the basic premise of the test. There has been no word on the fate of this proposed examination since. In 2022, the commission had ruled that private medical colleges in India will have to keep the fee for half the seats at par with that charged by government colleges in the respective states they are located in. This had come amid concerns that fee for MBBS seats at a private medical college in India could range between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 30 lakh a year, meaning that students would have to shell out anywhere from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1.5 crore for the duration of the course. This move was, however, challenged in different high courts and the Supreme Court, and was stayed and never implemented. Another key task of creating a national medical registry (NMR), meant to create a database of credentials and details of the nearly 13 lakh doctors practicing in the country, has also been struggling to take off. Over the last five years, the database has been able to register just about a few hundred doctors, with most doctors in even metro cities yet to be registered on the portal, NMC sources said. 'I feel that the MCI-Board of Governors (BoG) that had been put in place after dissolution of the MCI was at least able to carry out certain measures. NMC has fared poorly on many counts,' said Dr Satendra Singh, professor of physiology with the University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi. MCI-BoG—headed by Dr V.K. Paul, member-health, NITI Aayog—which worked on an interim basis for two years between 2018 and 2020, had brought in plans like district residency programme (DRP) scheme, and allowing private hospitals to start PG-equivalent courses that were later implemented by the NMC. Worse still, Dr Singh said, the commission has so far not even been able to ensure implementation of the competency-based medical education (CBME) curriculum across the country, mandatory under the World Federation for Medical Education's (WFME) Global Standards for Quality Improvement: Basic Medical Education, 2020. Established by an initiative of the World Health Organisation and the World Medical Association, the WFME had awarded recognition status to the NMC for 10 years in 2023. Also Read: Bringing dramatic drop in TB deaths, how TN set an example for rest of India with one-of-a-kind model Series of U-turns In September last year, NMC was forced to amend its contentious CBME guidelines after vehement protests by activists who called the guidelines 'outdated' and 'archaic'. The 2024 guidelines for the undergraduate forensic medicine curriculum were set to replace the 2019 guidelines in the upcoming academic session, and apply to one lakh medical students across universities in the country. Those who opposed the guidelines, however, underlined that the guidelines deemed 'lesbianism and sodomy' as unnatural sexual offences, clubbing them with sadism, necrophilia and voyeurism. This was not the first time that the NMC had gone back on a decision, which was being publicised as a 'reform'. A similar controversy had erupted in 2023 when the body had mandated doctors to prescribe generic drugs or face penalties, forcing it to put the professional conduct regulations on hold. The same year, after strong protests from southern states, the NMC had deferred its decision to set up more MBBS colleges, and add more UG seats based on the population of different states. 'The number of corrigendums and addendums that the NMC has published over the last few years is higher than what the MCI published in the over seven decades that it existed,' Dr Singh said. 'It shows how this body is functioning—without the required seriousness and vision that are absolute must.' The regulator, he stressed, has turned out to be 'old wine in a new bottle with little action that matters, and a master of U-turns that put a question mark on its credibility'. He also pointed out how the body has been working on an ad-hoc basis for the last two years. Dr Gangadhar, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, who had been the chairman of the commission's Medical Assessment and Rating Board since 2020, was appointed as officiating NMC chairman in 2023, when the term of its first chief Dr S.C. Sharma ended. In July last year, he was appointed as NMC chairman, but the positions of whole-time members and chairpersons of three out of four boards at the commission have been lying vacant for nearly two years, though several whole-time and part members of NMC were selected through a draw of lots by Health Minister J.P. Nadda last week. Besides the new chairperson, name of the new president of the medical assessment and rating board was also announced on 11 July. 'If the medical education regulator has to be run with a draw of lots, why not even choose our parliamentarians like that?' remarked Dr Asokan. He added that while there were issues with the way MCI had been functioning, mainly as too much power was vested with one person, it at least ensured that 'ruthless standards' were maintained in colleges leading to Indian doctors making their name world over. The former NMC member quoted earlier said that 'quality people' were reluctant to work with the commission, given the tight bureaucratic control. Influenced by NMO's ideology? In 2022, NMC had made it compulsory for every medical college to have a 'Department of Integrative Medicine Research' to promote integration of modern medicine with homoeopathy and Indian systems of medicine, such as Ayurveda. In December 2023, a section of doctors had protested strongly against the change in the logo by the commission, calling it a move aimed at 'altering' the 'secular' face of the government agency. The new logo had a colorful picture of Dhanvantari, recognised as the physician of the gods in Hinduism, and called the 'God of Ayurveda' in some religious texts. In April this year, the regulator had ruled that offering medical duty during the Char Dham Yatra in Uttarakhand would be counted as part of the District Residency Programme—a mandatory requirement for PG students to serve for three months in district hospitals or district health systems. 'These decisions have largely been due to NMO's line of thinking, which many in the medical fraternity now believe has too much influence on the commission's policy decisions,' said a doctor and faculty member at a medical college in Delhi, requesting anonymity. However, Dr Gangadhar dismissed these concerns. He said that the adoption of the logo followed a collective decision by NMC members after the idea was floated by a local IMA president from Maharashtra. 'The idea to include Char Dham Yatra in DRP for colleges across the country came after wide consultation within the commission, but a particular group associated with an organisation from some colleges decided to follow it,' he clarified. On the claims that the commission is actively promoting crosspathy—a term he said he does not agree with—the outgoing chairman maintained that the idea exists in the NMC Act itself. 'The (NMC) Act itself says that multiple boards (of different streams of medicine) should be meeting and discussing with an open mind as to what is needed and can be done. We are just following these provisions. Otherwise, the Act itself should be scrapped,' he remarked. (Edited by Mannat Chugh) Also Read: Govt tightens drug billing norm for CGHS claims. What new rule is & why pvt hospitals are pushing back
Time of India
16 hours ago
- Time of India
RSS women's wing expresses concern over substance abuse among youth
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The Hindu
a day ago
- The Hindu
Early diagnosis, simple lifestyle changes can prevent GERD complications: experts
Doctors stressed the need for early diagnosis and simple lifestyle changes to prevent further complications on GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease), a digestive disorder, at a webinar 'GERD-free Living: From Burn to Balance' on Sunday. The discussion was the final episode of the 15-part webinar series under the 'Healthy India Happy India initiative' by Naruvi Hospitals in collaboration with The Hindu. A panel of gastroenterologists, including E. Rabindranath and Jacob Raja A.S., both consultants at Naruvi Hospitals, Vellore, along with A.C. Arun, clinical lead, Gastroenterology at Lily Mission Hospital, Madurai, spoke on common concerns over GERD. Explaining the digestive system and the role of esophageal sphincter, Dr. Jacob said that the sphincter acts as the gateway between the lower esophagus and the stomach to prevent regurgitation. 'When the Gastroesophageal Reflux (GER) happens multiple times in a week impacting quality of life, work and sleep and causes symptoms such as persistent heart burn, chest pain, trouble in swallowing, then it can turn into a chronic medical condition called the GERD and requires treatment,' he said. Dr. Jacob said the global burden of GERD was quite high — one in every five individuals — with Europe, North America and parts of Asia reporting high numbers of cases. In comparison, India reports fewer cases, but its prevalence is increasing in young adults given their unhealthy lifestyle and eating habits. Speaking on diagnosis, lifestyle changes and management of GERD, Dr. Rabindranath advised people to quit smoking and alcohol consumption and avoid spicy and fatty foods and late night meals. He also advised against sedentary lifestyle and stress and for practising intake portion control and weight management. 'GERD mimics include heart issues, esophageal disorders, stomach issues, anxiety episodes, and panic attacks; therefore, medical consultation is important,' he added. Sharing tips to manage GERD, he advised 'elevating the head during sleep, keeping a gap of three to four hours between dinner and sleep, sleeping on the left side and wearing loose clothes while exercising'. Focusing on treatment, Dr. Arun spoke on how endoscopy helps to identify the complications and anatomical damage due to reflux episodes. 'Leaving GERD symptoms untreated could lead to esophageal ulcers and strictures making it difficult to swallow food, vomiting of blood and pre-cancerous condition. Minor surgeries, medication and endoscopic procedures help in arresting the progress of the disease,' he said.
