By IANS,
New Delhi : The American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) Friday suggested various measures to improve healthcare scenario in India. These include certification of hospitals, mandatory examinations for doctors to continue their license to practise, and speciality fellowship training.
On the eve of the second Indo-US Health Care Summit in the capital Friday, AAPI president Sanku S.Rao said that for a country that provides the best of education in school and at other levels, a few changes would greatly benefit the healthcare scenario here.
“In the US, every hospital is reviewed at regular intervals – say after every two years – to certify every factor like the functioning of each department or the success of surgeries. That keeps the hospital authorities to be on their toes, unlike here,” Rao told IANS.
He said doctors here should be made to take mandatory tests at regular intervals to be updated on latest in medical sciences like in the US.
“Here what happens is that once a doctor gets a license to practise he doesn’t have to bother about updating his knowledge. In the US, a doctor has to have a particular number of practising hours so that he or she can take the test in order to continue their license.”
“We are talking to authorities here suggesting such changes so as to improvise the healthcare scenario,” Rao said.
Education wise, AAPI sponsors a handful of fellowship programmes in India, as well as in the US for those Indian families not being able to afford a medical education for their children.
“We have drawn up a five-year action plan in India and this includes recommendations to improve medical school curriculum here. However, nothing has been confirmed. The medical school curriculum under the Medical Council of India (MCI) will take the final decision,” Rao said.
“Other than that we also suggest updated reading material, journals in the medical school libraries – which the alumni of some school like in the Osmania university are also doing. There should be more fellowships too,” Rao added.
An organisation of more than 60,000 physicians of Indian origin living in the US, AAPI had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian government four years back. According to the MoU, in association with doctors here AAPI will especially concentrate on improving the rural healthcare scenario.