Flight of students to study medical overseas a cause of introspection: Nitish

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Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday expressed surprise that so many students from India go to far-off countries for medical courses and said the “national phenomenon” should lead to the realisation that medical courses offered by private institutions back home were prohibitively expensive.

Speaking in the state assembly, Kumar said, “Before the Ukraine crisis, I was completely ignorant that so many children from Bihar and other much developed states than ours have gone there for medical studies.”

Kumar made the statement while intervening during health minister Mangal Pandey’s reply on a call attention motion brought by Sanjeev Kumar of the JD(U), who sought government’s response on the need for capping fees of medical studies in private medical colleges and increasing number of seats in government medical colleges in light of the huge outflow of medical aspirants going to Ukraine from Bihar.

“This is not a state issue as students from all across India are going to Ukraine. We all have to think at the national level so that students do not feel the need to go abroad for medical studies. We will look into it,” Kumar said.

Hundreds of students from India, including quite a few from Bihar, are still stuck in war-ravaged Ukraine, according to reports.

Pandey, in his reply, told the House that state government had taken a slew of measures for better medical studies by increasing the number of government medical colleges and initiating opening of six medical colleges, which would come up in the next few years. “ In Bihar, there are six medical colleges. Six new are under construction,” he said.

On the need for capping the fees in private medical colleges, the minister said the fee structure of private medical colleges is determined by an independent committee headed by a retired judge and revised every three years . The fee structure, the minister said, is decided based on various parameters like infrastructure of the colleges, salary of teaching and non-teaching faculty, library facilities, laboratory, administrative costs etc.

“ As per a central government directive, all private medical colleges in the country would have to make fees at par with government medical colleges for 50% of the total seats from the next academic year,” the minister said.

Pandey also said central government had restricted private medical colleges from taking capitation fees and issued them advisories that the principle of “not for profit” should be applied in fixing fees for courses like MBBS and PG.

However, when members both from ruling and opposition pressed that government tame private medical colleges from charging higher fees, the minister said he would apprise the committee determining the fees of private medical colleges about the opinion of legislators. He also said those students taking medical degrees from abroad have to take a foreign medical graduate test conducted by NMC ( National Medical Council) to become eligible and register to practice in India.


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