Major boost to Medical Education in the offing

We have all along been advocating for doing more and on priority, to boost medical facilities and creation of its necessary infrastructure in Jammu and Kashmir. We are notin dispute with the levels of efforts that are being made in this direction as for the first time in decades, more medical colleges in Jammu and Kashmir have been sanctioned , to be precise as many as nine colleges plus two AIIMS . Needless to underline, the immense utility in the area of medical services these additional medical colleges were going to provide, as quality of healthcare services was going to further improve on an even base and what is more important, it was aimed at promoting and providing affordable medical education in the Union Territory, can hardly be doubted . The more avenues of medical education beyond graduation levels in particular , the more were chances for Jammu and Kashmir to emerge as a model Union Territory in providing adequate medical care and facilities besides resolving to a larger extent, the shortage of Doctors . To further buttress such prospects , Union Health Ministry has sanctioned additional 67 seats in Post Graduate courses in Medicine and Surgery in Jammu and Kashmir. This decision of the Central Government, especially taken during its all efforts expended in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic, merits an acclaim. We at the same time, share the positive elevated feelings of the eligible aspirants from the UT, over this decision of the Central Government as it would amount to passing yet another milestone in the journey towards the goal of better , adequate and quality medical care in Jammu and Kashmir.
The top medical institutions of Jammu and Kashmir, Government Medical College Jammu , Government Medical College Srinagar and Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences Soura, Srinagar would get total 50 seats in different disciplines in addition to 17 seats due to increase in faculty. Out of 50 seats , GMC ,Jammu would get 25 seats and the other two institutions in Srinagar 19 and 6 respectively. While the decision must be really hailed but certain questions do arise as since now Post Graduation seats in the UT from existing 493 were going to be increased to 560 for the academic session of 2020-21, were all the Doctors thus trained and rolled out of these institutions going to serve parts of Jammu and Kashmir where we need them most ? No doubt , more and more medical students come out of these professional colleges each year fully trained as practicing Doctors , why the pinch of shortage of Doctors continues to be felt? The position is worse in our rural and even semi urban areas where due to constraints comparatively more than the urban areas even in matters of alternatives , are severely faced. Since varied disciplines and fields like General Medicine, Surgery, Paediatrics, Physiology, Anatomy, Community Medicine, Anaesthesiology, Pathology, Radiodiagnosis etc are included in imparting higher medical education, after the completion of the three year course in each of the disciplines, the services of the Doctors must be ensured to be utilised in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir . There must be proper regulations issued and enforced and undertakings obtained .Any flight of talent , polished, trained and fully prepared at the UT levels , must not take place from Jammu and Kashmir for ‘better’ and greener pastures.
It is presumed that but for the actively pursuing and recommending for the enhanced seats by the Health and Medical Education Department with an aim to address the aspirations of the concerned aspirants of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir to have post graduation courses in varied disciplines available in the UT itself, sanctioning of additional seats would have not been possible so quickly. Moreover, the Department has applied for 225 -DNB seats which is held up for want of completion of inspection and other mandatory formalities which got postponed due to the ongoing crisis of COVID-19 pandemic . Once the programme of the DNB across the UT starts, that would herald an era of specialised and super specialised healthcare across Jammu and Kashmir.

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