Amendments in the Medical Council of India (MCI) regulations will open the floodgates for hundreds of non-resident Indian (NRI) doctors to come back to their roots. MCI has eased the cross-over rules and has set a target of bringing back 5,000 Indian doctors, including teachers, settled in US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

MCI has removed the main bottleneck by recognising the postgraduation and other degrees of these specific countries where health facilities are supposedly best in the world and the education was done in English medium. They have the choice of coming back to teach in a private or government college as well as work in a private or government hospital. Also, they can set up their own medical colleges and hospitals. Indian doctors in these countries are the richest segment even among NRIs.

Apart from accepting foreign degrees, the MCI has made special provision so that foreign experience is also counted. For example, if there is a professor of medicine in a US university, with the required number of years of experience to become one in India, he can be hired as a professor by any medical college in India. This will bring about a huge change not only in the cities but also in the countryside, if the doctors returning home really go deeper into their roots. Besides, MCI also sees the possibility of groups of NRI doctors coming back and pooling in their resources to build hospitals and medical colleges.

For marketing the concept, MCI has teamed up with the Indian Medical Association, Association of American Physicians of India and British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin to host an event in New Delhi on January 2-4.