IMA Calls for a One-day Nation-wide Strike Against the National Medical Commission Bill

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has declared a one-day country-wide strike against the National Medical Commission Bill on January 2. The Bill has faced flak for favouring private medical institutions. It will repeal the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956, and dissolve the Indian Medical Council (IMC). In its place, the National Medical Commission (NMC) will be set up. As per Section 5 of the Bill, the NMC will consist of 25 members, appointed by the Union Government. A Search Committee consisting of seven members, of which only two will have experience in the medical field, will recommend names to the Union Government for the post of the Chairperson, and part-time members. These posts will have a maximum term of four years.

However, this is not the only problematic provision. The first proviso to Section 33 (1) (d) allows the NMC to permit a medical professional to perform surgery or practice medicine without qualifying the National Licentiate Examination. Section 49 (4), Section 33 (1) and Section 55 (2) (zl) provide for ‘AYUSH’ practitioners being allowed to prescribe ‘modern medicines’ after completing a ‘bridge course’.

The Ministry of AYUSH was created in 2014 to develop education and research in Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Homoeopathy, naturopathy, sowa rigpa and other forms of ‘indigenous medicine’. The surprising fact is that homoeopathy and naturopathy are not ‘indigenous’ medical systems, let alone medicine supported by science. The two systems were the creation of German physicians in the 1700s and 1800s respectively. Modern science has found that the principles of these two ‘systems’ are unfounded and cannot be substantiated by scientific evidence. In 2016, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a Nobel Laureate came down heavily on homoeopathy and referred to it medicine as a medicine that works based on the ‘placebo effect’. Having a separate Ministry to promote these unscientific and ineffective treatments is bad, but allowing such practitioners to perform surgery and prescribe drugs is dangerous to the health of patients who don’t know better.