Leading medical bodies in India have criticized the recent announcement of health minister to change the undergraduate medical curriculum.
Mr.Vinay Agarwal, Secretary of Indian medical Association that has over 150,000 doctors as members said: "The idea of adding ayurveda, unani and homoeopathy subjects in the already over-crowded medical curriculum is not going to help anybody,"He added: "The move would also lead to an increase in quackery," The worry that doctors have is that it will 'dilute' the standards of medical education and ‘weaken’ 'weaken' Indian System of Medicine as these systems will become subsidiaries to the main allopathic system.
He said that India had produced world-class doctors and the government should now be looking at strengthening the research capability of Indian medical field.
"Moreover, the Supreme Court and various other courts of the country have repeatedly opined that one doctor of one pathy (system) cannot practice another pathy," Agarwal said.
The association also countered the health minister's claim that the medical curriculum was age-old. The curriculum in fact had been changed several times. The new curriculum to do integration of basic sciences with clinical subjects is already being implemented on the international levels guidelines as recommended by the Medical Council of India.
