MCI CONTROVERSARY REGARDING DISABILITY CRITERIA FOR UG AND PG MEDICAL ASPIRING STUDENTS 

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From time to time,Medical students with disability  lodge cases  in high courts and supreme court as they are denied to get admitted for UG or MBBS course or PG as MD/MS on MCI laws and regulations.Recently a blind student and a students with extremity chopped was allowed by supreme court to pursue medical study.

        Anjani Bala, an MBBS doctor from Ranchi with polio, who was denied admission to a PG medical course after she was evaluated at Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi. She graduated from the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences in Patna and secured rank 80,506 in the NEET PG, making her eligible for specialisation. She interned in all departments. She petitioned the Court, saying that when she had completed her MBBS and done internships and worked in every department, both clinical and non-clinical, why couldn’t she be allowed to do an MD? The exam for MD is on May 5 and the guidelines are yet to be finalised.In response,The Medical Council of India (MCI) r submitted to the Delhi High Court that discriminatory regulations for postgraduate (PG) medical education have been amended and people with over 80 percent disability will no longer be barred outright.But MCI told that Disability students will now be considered on a case-by-case basis and evaluated for functional competency while using assistive devices.

                               However, the amended regulations by MCI only solve the problems of those with locomotor disability of over 80 percent. For several other categories of disabilities, the problems still persist. For example, those who have had one hand amputated still can’t get admission.

                         Last year, the Supreme Court in the Muskan Sheikh case asked why the petitioner couldn’t become a doctor as only one hand was amputated. Thereafter, she was granted admission in the MBBS course. But the new regulations require an applicant to have both hands and defy the SC’s observations. Similarly, those with blindness,blood disorders such as haemophilia, thalassemia and sickle cell disease were also barred. Those with more than 80 percent of these diseases are not eligible for admission. But when persons with 80 percent locomotor disability— including those using wheelchairs—are not barred, why should persons with other disabilities be punished only ?

        Disability is calculated by a board specified by the State (in this case, Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi) based on visual, locomotor, speech and mental impairment and multiple disabilities. Minimum impairment should be 40 percent and the disability certificate is valid for five years for temporary disability and lifelong for permanent disability.With respect to specific learning disabilities, the MCI guidelines were discriminatory for both UG and PG admissions through NEET. This includes dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia. But now dysgraphia has been removed from the allowed categories. So why have the other two categories been allowed and not this?

         In India, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, along with the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules, 2017 (together, the “Disability Law”) has been enacted by the government. The Disability Law gives effect to the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It inter alia seeks to protect disabled persons from various forms of discrimination, increases measures for effective participation and inclusion in society and ensures equality of opportunity and adequate accessibility.

       Prior to its enactment, the law governing the rights of the disabled was scattered across the Constitution and various other Acts. Although these laws aimed at safeguarding the rights of persons with disabilities, they did not specifically provide for equality of opportunity especially in matters relating to employment. The Disabilities Act, 2016, replaced the Disabilities Act, 1995. Under the 2016 Act, all establishments (including the private sector) should have an equal opportunity policy and employers should register the equal opportunity policy with the State Commissioner or Central Commissioner (as applicable).

              Most MBBS and PG doctors with disabilities may still be able to contribute significantly in desk and diagnostic jobs and as writers, speakers, medical artists, creators, administrators, etc. So why restrict them?All said and done, a professionally competent doctor with some disabilities should be handled with concern as he can still be of use to society.But argument placed by MCI and other regulators lie in the fact that if disabled person due to it's disability should not harm a diseases patient as if harm is caused to patient due to disability, then every ethics of healing ad curing a patient is lost and healer becomes killer.So there is always a controversial line between sympathy and competency.Sympathy should not hamper competency particularly in a field of health of a person as if health destroyed ,life is destroyed and is mostly cant be reversed as possible  in other field or services for which our law permit employment of disabled person equal with normal person.

MCI Ethics Regulations 2.1.2 says: “A medical practitioner having any incapacity detrimental to the patient or which can affect his performance vis-à-vis the patient is not permitted to practice his profession.” This should be interpreted with regulation 8.5 which says: “During the pendency of the complaint, the appropriate Council may restrain the physician from performing the procedure or practice which is under scrutiny.” So such a person should choose a field in which his disability will not harm the patient.

               International laws, the Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990, prohibits discrimination against qualified job applicants with disabilities. However, only a few disabled students enter the medical profession as they must be able to perform the essential functions of a doctor and each school determines for itself what these criteria are.The number of disabled doctors has, of course, grown since the mid-1990s.The US has many practising disabled doctors. A study in the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation based on data from 1996 estimated that just 0.2 percent of medical school graduates have some type of disability.Even there too ,rules and regulation of different medical schools and universities vary and are specific type than in general in nature taking safety of patient in account first than morale of disability.