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Medical Council to derecognise courses run by autonomous college
The NMC has derecognized postgraduate courses run by Mumbai's College of Physicians and Surgeons due to regulatory non-compliance and severe deficiencies.
MUMBAI: The National Medical Commission (NMC) has taken a decision to derecognise courses run by the College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPS), an autonomous body imparting post-graduate medical education in the city and awarding FCPS (Fellowship of the College of Physicians and Surgeons) degrees and diplomas. Among these are FCPS in ophthalmology, pathology, medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, dermatology, venereology, surgery, and diplomas in pathology and bacteriology and child health. The NMC website shows that the decision to derecognise the courses was taken in its meeting on July 16.
When questioned, Ajay Sambare Patil, president of the CPS, said the college had not received any mail or communication from the NMC. “They have not issued any show cause notice to us,” he said. “We have replied to all their show cause notices so far.”
The CPS has been in several controversies, and last year, the government banned it from conducting medical courses. Later, when Hassan Mushrif of the NCP became the medical education minister, permission was given to restart courses.
On June 5 this year, the NMC wrote to the union health ministry that its Post-Graduate Medical Education Board had issued a show cause notice to CPS, Mumbai, for not following the regulatory provisions of NMC and ordered that CPS courses should be stopped.
Dinesh Waghmare, principal secretary of the state education department, said that the decision to derecognise the courses was an old one communicated to the department in July by the union health ministry.
The letter written by the union health ministry said that it had received a letter on June 26 from the medical education and drugs department regarding the feasibility of commencing the counselling process for admission to 10 recognised courses of CPS which were included in the schedule of the Maharashtra Medical Council Act, 1965, based on the NEET PG-2023 scores.
The matter was sent to the NMC for examination. The NMC sent back a comment that any institute, other than those included in the schedule of the NMC Act, 2019, had to obtain the NMC’s prior permission to start a course of recognised qualification and get it renewed at regular intervals.
The letter states that the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) had conducted an inspection in 120 institutes/hospitals where CPS courses were being run and found that two hospitals were closed and 74 institutes refused inspection. Severe deficiencies were found in most of the institutes/ hospitals inspected. The MMC concluded that admitting students to such institutes would be detrimental to the students’ careers and also for the health system.
