Indian Students: Ukraine returnee medical students may continue education under exchange programme

Amit Deshmukh, minister for medical education said, “We have asked the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) to contact the universities in Ukraine and ask them if they plan to continue online classes and restart their curriculum”

Mumbai: In a respite for medical students returning from war-torn Ukraine to Maharashtra, the state government is planning to allow them to continue their education in medical colleges in the state under the student exchange programme. This will ensure that their education is not interrupted till the time normalcy is restored in Ukraine.

Stranded Indian students evacuated from crisis-hit Ukraine, arrive at the international airport, in Mumbai, India, on Thursday. (Photo by Vijay Bate/HT Photo)

“We have asked the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) to contact the universities in Ukraine and ask them if they plan to continue online classes and restart their curriculum,” said Amit Deshmukh, minister for medical education.

He added that the MUHS had also been asked to communicate with universities in Ukraine regarding accommodating medical students from Ukraine as exchange students in medical colleges in Maharashtra. There are between 1,000 to 2,000 students from Maharashtra who are studying medicine in the nation, which is facing an invasion from Russia.

“We cannot say if the students can be admitted to medical colleges in Maharashtra,” noted Deshmukh, adding that the curriculum, certification and admission systems for the medicine course varied in India and Ukraine. “However, we are considering if these students can be taken in here as exchange students in a student exchange program till the situation there (in Ukraine) is normalised,” he added, stating that if these plans come through, these student medicos can be taken into medical colleges in Maharashtra.

The state government will also seek clarity about this from the union government and the National Medical Commission (NMC). The MUHS has meanwhile started collecting details of students from Maharashtra who had enrolled for medical courses in Ukraine and has asked them to fill the form available on the MUHS website.

Maharashtra has a total of 44 medical colleges that are run by the state government, civic bodies like the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC), private institutions, central institutions and minority-run institutions. They have a total of 6,750 seats for the MBBS course. A total of 43 colleges also has 3,171 post-graduate seats. Apart from this, Maharashtra also has 10 deemed universities which offer medical education. Admissions to the medicine course in India are conducted based on the scores secured in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) or NEET (UG).

An official from the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) said that the state government was collecting data about the total number of students who had enrolled for courses in medicine in Ukraine. This will help distribute them in the various medical colleges in the state. Accordingly, the MUHS has issued an appeal asking the students to register their details with the varsity. MUHS officials said so far, just 35 students had written to them.

The official added that they were focussing on ensuring that there was no gap in the education of the students, and hence the MUHS has been asked to tie up with the universities in Ukraine. The students will continue their learning here and return to Ukraine once the situation normalises.