Indian plan for rural healthcare providers encounters more resistance

A three year old proposal by India’s health ministry to establish new cadres of mid-level healthcare providers for rural areas that lack medical graduates has encountered opposition from an Indian parliamentary panel on health.

The panel has asked the health ministry to abandon the plan and instead increase the number of medical colleges in rural areas and make one year of rural service mandatory for all medical graduates.

The panel’s recommendations are identical to suggestions by the Indian Medical Association, a non-government body of about 250 000 doctors, which has campaigned against the proposal.1 The government and the Medical Council of India jointly made the proposal in February 2010.2

The president of the Indian Medical Association, Kalikuttynadar Vijayakumar, said the association was pleased with the panel’s recommendations. “We’re very happy that we were able to convince the panel’s members to accept our views,” Vijayakumar told the BMJ …