IMA urges PM Modi to accommodate Ukraine-returned medical students in Indian colleges

NEW DELHI: Expressing concern about the future of medical students who have returned home from Ukraine, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has recommended to prime minister Narendra Modi that they be adjusted in Indian medical schools as a one-time measure.

In a letter to Modi on Friday, the IMA stated that such students should be permitted to go to Indian medical colleges for the remainder of their MBBS course through an "appropriate disbursed distribution", but it should not be seen as an increase in the annual intake capacity. The IMA has recommended that this could be done following the modalities of distribution of students in other medical schools in India if an ongoing medical college is closed. This will also need the validation of certificates from relevant authorities so that the students’ progression in Ukraine is permissible in Indian medical schools, the IMA said in the letter.

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"Resultantly, on passing out they will be as good as Indian medical graduates and not foreign medical graduates," it said. It said the analogy of the proposition is drawn on the basis of explicit modality which is availed in the Indian context in case of the closure of an ongoing medical college in India. Under such circumstances, the IMA said in the letter, that students already admitted in these colleges are "appropriately disbursed into other medical schools in India in terms of a structured procedure which is prescribed and the same is taken as a onetime exception and not to be quoted as a precedence and construed as an augmentation or increase".

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The doctors' body said it is concerned about the fate and future of all these medical students admitted in Ukraine who “have turned out to be hapless victims” of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Hundreds of medical students from India admitted to various colleges in Ukraine have to abandon their courses and return home after it became dangerous to stay there due to the ongoing war between the two neighbours. "Waiting for the things to take an appropriate shape and thereby keeping the fate of all these medical students in limbo cannot be taken as a worthwhile exercise," the letter stated.