Ma Su writes to Centre to guide NMC to recognise MD course

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian wrote a letter to Union Health Minister Mansukh L Mandaviya to guide National Medical Commission on recognising the creation of an MD course in Diabetology, Nutrition - Metabolism in the State and approving it in the schedule of the Commission.

Stating that the prevalence of Diabetes is about 10.4 per cent in Tamil Nadu, he said that Diabetes Mellitus is a chronic metabolic disorder which contributes immensely to increased health expenditure for both the Government and the individual. If urgent preventive measures are not undertaken, most of the pre-diabetes will rapidly progress to frank diabetes, thus increasing the burden for the country in Tamil Nadu.

In the past few years, both our State and Central Governments have been focusing on detection and early treatment of non-communicable diseases like diabetes in their health policies. Hence, starting an M D (Diabetology, Nutrition - Metabolism) course will increase the number of professional health-care providers available in this speciality in the country, the letter said.

He emphasised that the course will help in the successful implementation of the State and Central Government's policy of creating Diabetes care units in all health care centres in the State and the country. The course will also help to create diabetes care units in all the district peripheral hospitals in the State of Tamil Nadu.

Talking about the already existing courses related to Diabetes, he mentioned that Tamil Nadu was the first State in the whole country to start a fulltime 2 years diploma in Diabetology course at the Institute of Diabetology at Madras Medical College since 1986, the only such course in the entire country to have been approved by the Medical Council of India (MCI) till date.

Thus, he stated that the creation of a new MD course will help in the conversion of the already existing MCI recognised diploma in Diabetology seats into degree seats, thus helping in creating more number of teaching faculties in this specialty as per National Medical Commission norms.

Speaking of the training in degree course in Diabetes - other metabolic diseases, Ma Subramanian said that training will be totally different from training in MD in General Medicine, Community Medicine and DM in Endocrinology. He suggested that if the M.D., (Diabetology, Nutrition - Metabolism) course is included by the National Medical Commission in the schedule of PGMER, 2000, the existing Diploma in Diabetology seats could be converted to MD Degree seats. The proposal for the same has been sent by the Tamil Nadu Dr M G R Medical University to National Medical Commission.

The State health department had requested the National Medical Commission to consider the proposal favourably and issue necessary orders thereon to enable the University to start the course. However, the National Medical Commission, in its letter on Feb 23, 2022, had stated that the said request has not been acceded as this will downgrade all the existing courses.

The state health department has filed an appeal to the Secretary, National Medical Commission and requested to consider the above proposal favourably and issue necessary orders thereon to enable the University to start the course in the forthcoming academic year itself, as per Section 28 (5) of the guidelines of National Medical Commission for dealing with appeals preferred to the Central Government Under National Medical Commission Act, 2019.

Ma Subramanian requested Mansukh Mandaviya to guide the National Medical Commission to consider th proposal favourably and to issue necessary orders thereon to enable the University to start the course in the forth coming academic year.