Over 3,500 Foreign Medical Graduates (FMG), after having completed their courses from institutions in foreign countries and internships in India, have been running from pillar to post for the past several months to get themselves registered. Medical graduates cannot practice medicine or pursue higher degree courses in India without getting permanent registrations from their respective state medical councils.
"We need urgent intervention by the Union health minister in this matter. We need permanent registration because without that we are not allowed to work or study further," a medical student who returned from abroad told Moneycontrol.
The problem for these foreign medical graduates began after different state medical councils in the country started implementation of National Medical Council’s (NMC) notification issued on July 28, 2022, with retrospective effect.
"It all started back in 2020 when a foreign medical graduate from Tamil Nadu was denied provisional registration after passing the FMGE. The matter was heard in the Madras High Court. Meanwhile, the NMC as the governing body of medical education in India filed a petition in the Supreme Court and released a notification on July 28," another medical student said.
What does the NMC notification say?
The NMC, in the notification of July 28, said Indian students in the last year of their undergraduate medicine course who had to leave their foreign medical institutes and return to India due to COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war, and who have subsequently completed their studies and granted the certificate of completion of the course by their respective institute, on or before 30 June 2022, shall be permitted to appear in the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE).
"Upon qualifying the FMG examination, such foreign medical graduates are required to undergo Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship (CRMI) for a period of two years to make up for the clinical training which could not be physically attended by them during the undergraduate medicine course in the foreign institute as also to familiarise them with the practise of medicine under Indian conditions," the notification added.
The NMC, while defining the criterion for foreign medical graduates, said they will be eligible to get registration only after completing the CRMI of two years, adding that the relaxation was a "one-time measure" and shall not be treated as "precedence in the future".
Why states are denying permanent registration?
However, foreign medical graduates say the NMC’s notification of July 2022 was being enforced retrospectively.
"There are students from four batches (December and June 2020 and December and June 2021), who have passed the FMG exam and also completed the mandatory one-year internship, yet haven’t been able to get the permanent registration, as several state medical councils are implementing the NMC order of 2022 for students who passed in 2021," another FMGE graduate said, requesting anonymity.
The FMGE is a qualifying exam conducted by the National Board of Examination (NBE) in India. Indian students who completed MBBS in countries like Russia, China, the Philippines, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Bangladesh and other foreign countries must clear the FMGE to get a licence to practise in India.
Sarvesh Pandey, General Secretary of the Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA), said there was ambiguity in the interpretation of NMC’s July 28, 2022 order by several state medical councils.
"While states like Gujarat, Telangana, West Bengal, Karnataka, Bihar, Assam, and Orissa have allowed the foreign medical graduates passed in 2021 with one-year internship permanent registration, states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi are implementing the order retrospectively," he added.
Silent NMC
The NMC officials did not respond to the questions related to FMGs.
A student said that so far, the governing body has refrained from clarifying its position on the matter.
"We met the NMC officials and briefed them about the situation. They said they only made policies and can’t force state councils to act in a certain way," he added.
Meanwhile, FORDA has written to Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya to sort out the disparity in the way different state medical councils are addressing the issue of permanent registration for FMGs post-internship.
Dr Aviral Mathur, President, FORDA, said the sudden discontinuation and disparity in issuance of permanent registration for FMG graduates from the same universities and batches, who completed their classes online and achieved identical milestones in terms of passing MBBS, clearing FMGE, and completing their internship, is causing significant distress and confusion among the affected students.
"We believe it is imperative to address this inconsistency in the issuance of permanent registration to foreign medical graduates across various states in India. The current situation is in direct contravention to the principle of equality and fairness," he said in the letter to the Union minister.
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