The real elephant in the room

doi:10.1136/bmj.39353.489120.BE

BMJ 2007;335:684 (6 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.39353.489120.BE

Letters

Medical migration

The real elephant in the room

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Winyard has missed the issue of non-European Union UK medicalgraduates.¹ These students make up about 15% of medical undergraduates,and UK medical schools depend on their financial backing tosurvive. Each student would have forked out at least £80000 ( ${euro}$ 114 000; $162 000) by year 5, excluding the cost of living.When these students first chose to study in Britain, the ruleswould have allowed them fair access to postgraduate training.

Since April 2006, with the abolition of permit-free training,these students—many with 10 times the debt of local students—areleft in limbo, with a strong feeling of breach of moral contract.What I fail to understand is why these non-EU students are includedin the figures used by the Department of Health and the ForeignOffice when accounting for UK graduates but are judged as "internationalmedical graduates" when applying for jobs.

What people should also . . . [Full text of this article]

Mohammad Farhad Peerally, fourth year medical student

University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN

mda04mfp@shef.ac.uk