DNA Edit: Revisit NMC’s Sec 32 - In a country with quacks, India can do without more

In 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) came out with a damning report on India’s health and medical system, particularly where it is needed the most — the country’s rural areas.

Only one in five doctors in rural India is qualified to practise medicine, it reported on the country’s healthcare workforce, highlighting the widespread problem of quackery. It said that 31.4% of those calling themselves allopathy doctors were educated only up to Class 12 while 57.3% doctors did not have a medical qualification!

Shockingly, self-styled doctors without formal training provide up to 75% of primary care visits. Under the circumstances, serious questions need to be raised about the recently-passed National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill 2019 in the Lok Sabha. While there are many progressive sections, which will allow the proposed NMC to regulate or fix the fees for 50% seats at both MBBS and post-graduate levels in all private and deemed universities and introduce reforms to tackle the skewed distribution of medical seats, the charge that it will promote undiluted quackery offsets all the other advantages.

The Bill’s Section 32 — which allows anyone connected with modern medicine to be registered at the NMC and be licensed to practise — is the main bone of contention. It instantly allows for licensing of more than three-and-a-half-lakh unqualified non-medical persons to practise medicine and contains provisions to add more such persons each year.

There are genuine fears that all paramedics, including pharmacists, nurses, physiotherapists, optometrists and others, will become eligible to practise medicine and prescribe medicines independently. Importantly, there is no cap on the years of experience a paramedic would need to be licensed to practise medicine using this route. In a country, where quackery abounds, this section needs to be revisited.