Even as many Indian medical students remain stranded in Ukraine or wait in neighbouring countries to return home, talk of rehabilitating them in Indian colleges so that their careers are not jeopardised has begun. The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has recommended that they be accommodated in Indian medical schools as a one-time measure. Of the nearly 18,000 Indian students in Ukraine, a majority were medical undergraduate students, at different stages of their six-year MBBS program, when the war began. Many of them said they haven’t heard from their universities about further steps, and are worried about their education and career. While some chief ministers and academic administrators have lent their support to the IMA’s suggestion of letting them finish their degrees in India, several medical education experts are not enthusiastic, and feel the process would be challenging.
Students who are back from Ukraine are faced with a situation similar to the one experienced by those who returned from China before the pandemic began. Even after two years they are unable to return due to China’s ban on international student visas and delay in diplomatic dialogue with India. Some students who returned from Ukraine said administrators of universities situated in regions seeing relatively less conflict have hinted at resumption of online classes soon.
Dr Ravi Wankhedkar, Treasurer, World Medical Association and former president of the IMA, said the government’s immediate priority must be to bring all the students back and rehabilitate them psychologically, before accommodating them in the Indian medical education system. “In the coming months, we need thorough discussions with all stakeholders including student bodies, academicians, the National Medical Commission, health universities, etc. on what are the existing regulations, and if some students need to be accommodated, how that can be done. While there are humanitarian concerns, these things can’t be decided merely on the basis of political or emotional reasons. Unprecedented situations demand unusual solutions, but even if it’s a one-time measure, it must be well thought out and ensure a level playing field for Indian and foreign medical graduates,” he said.
For students who were able to complete their degree but couldn’t finish the year-long internship in Ukraine, which is mandatory to attempt the FMGE (Foreign Medical Graduates Examination), the National Medical Commission (NMC)’s recently relaxed regulations allow them to do this in India. They have to clear FMGE and complete another year-long internship in India to be able to practice medicine here, as per existing regulations. But most students who have returned are somewhere in the middle of completing their graduation. And the difference in curriculum and academic standards followed by colleges in Ukraine and India would make it difficult to simply let a second-year MBBS student from a Ukraine college continue in the same year in an Indian college, say medical educators.
Dr Rajiv Ranjan Prasad, Dean of Medicine and Education at Aryabhatta Knowledge University, Patna, and former inspector of affiliation with the Medical Council of India, now replaced by NMC, said one of the main challenges will be in getting students to be assimilated into the Indian medical education system. “In each university system, students are taught a certain number of hours of medicine, surgery, gynaecology, etc. These hours have to be balanced with the Indian norms. Ukraine follows the American pattern of medical education, we follow the British pattern. Subjects taught there in the first year might be taught here in the final year and vice versa. So the corresponding courses for each batch can be difficult to establish,” he said. Speaking at a discussion on the future of Indian medical students in Ukraine, Prasad had stated that the universities in Ukraine are not reciprocally recognised by Indian medical universities and therefore, seamlessly accommodating them is not possible.
Dr Edwin Joe, a former director of medical education in Tamil Nadu, suggested that unless India allows colleges to create a temporary parallel set-up for these students as per Ukrainian norms, it would be difficult for them to simply continue their education here. If the transfers are to happen, experts say there would have to be an elaborate screening process to select and assign students to different colleges, fee structures would have to be thought through, and additional training would be needed for students to assimilate within Indian colleges.
Read:
Another challenge is the shortage of medical undergraduate seats in India, which is one of the main reasons so many students have gone abroad. Even as a one-time measure, taking in such a huge number of students from Ukraine could be a difficult task for Indian colleges, experts said. Dr Rohan Krishnan, president, FAIMA (Federation of All India Medical Association) Doctors Association, said that since the idea of accepting Ukraine students in Indian colleges was floated, he has been getting queries from students belonging to medical colleges in China and Philippines, who have been unable to go back for the past two years. These students number more than 23,000.
While the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help students returning from Ukraine to continue medical education in India, according to The Times of India, Tamil Nadu Medical Council President Dr K Senthil has said that in this case supernumerary seats would have to be approved in colleges. This could disturb the existing teacher-student ratio and add to the strain on facilities and infrastructure available in colleges, thereby affecting the quality of medical education. Dr Rajiv Ranjan Prasad has also said that India has already stretched its resources in medical education to the maximum, and accommodating students from other countries should not happen at the cost of lowering the standards of medical education in India.
Another concern that experts have voiced is over the quality of education in countries like Ukraine. Dr Prasad said that the training in foreign universities can often be inadequate. Dr Edwin Joe said that there is a danger of losing education standards and indirectly “diluting our medical system” if these students are accommodated in Indian colleges. Another objection that doctors and experts in India have raised is that the move would be unfair to medical graduates in Indian colleges, as well as NEET aspirants, who may have done better in NEET than the Foreign Medical Graduates from Ukraine but were unable to gain admission in a government medical college.
At a panel discussion hosted by FAIMA Doctors Association on the issue, an Indian medical student at a Ukraine college named Anshul countered the concerns over dilution of medical standards in India by pointing out that these students would still be required to clear FMGE or the National Exit Test (NExT) proposed to replace it, in order to obtain a licence to practice medicine in India. While many have suggested that students wait and hope for the situation in Ukraine to improve, the student also pointed out that India adopting a neutral stance on the war, and abstaining on the UN Security Council resolution against Russia's aggression against Ukraine, has students worried that it makes their future in Ukrainian colleges precarious.
If students are to be accepted into Indian colleges, some medical administrators, like Dr K Senthil and Dr Rajiv Ranjan Prasad suggest that it is not possible without special training or a bridge course to adapt to the Indian education system. There have been a few offers from colleges around the world willing to accept students enrolled in Ukrainian colleges, including the Consortium of Deemed-to-be Universities in Karnataka (CODEUNIK), which has offered to accommodate about 1,000 students if allowed by the Union government and the NMC. CODEUNIK Secretary S Kumar told The Hindu that the consortium is willing to conduct a bridge course, while the selection of students would be left to statutory bodies.
Universities in Poland, Hungary, and UAE have also offered to take in students returning from Ukraine. Dr Prasad also suggested that if the students are allowed to continue their studies in other countries with a similar medical education pattern as Ukraine, the Indian government could help finance their education in case the fees and other expenses are in excess of the amount they had been paying in Ukraine.
The NMC has proposed to make it mandatory for MBBS students to complete their course within ten years of being admitted. This gives students a buffer period of about three years to find alternative options, as MBBS courses in Ukraine have a duration of six years, apart from a one-year mandatory internship.