Updated MBBS curriculum lets down disabled aspirants, Barely Mentions Disability
Aspiring medical students of India is all set to kickstart the course with the new curriculum that is due to roll out in August 2019. Though the MBBS curriculum has been revised after 21 years, the new curriculum also skips the issue of disability and disability rights.
The Rights of Persons with Disability Act, of 2016 legislation says that curriculum in universities, colleges and schools should include information on the rights of people with disabilities. But the new curriculum doesn’t even seem to care about this.
The Medical Council of India (MCI) and the Union health ministry have both been asked to re-examine the curriculum and include a component on disability rights. The Delhi commissioner for persons with disability has written to the health ministry about the issue earlier. The letter states that there needs to be a shift from the medical approach to the rights-based approach to disability. “The new curriculum does not make MBBS students aware of key provisions of this 2016 law for disabled people’s rights, neither does it give students the human rights perspective to a disability,” it reads further. Earlier, Satendra Singh, a doctor with locomotor disability, has raised several points regarding the disability rights of doctors. A second letter on the same issue was sent to the MCI from the national chief commissioner for persons with disabilities asking MCI to look into the points raised by Satendra Singh.
“We often complain that doctors don’t understand patients with disabilities. I have seen people with disabilities often go to a doctor with an ailment but doctors focus only on their disability instead,” says Dr Singh. Treatment options are already there, but we now need a human rights approach, he adds. He alerted authorities that “disability competencies are not adequately represented” in this new curriculum, through his letter. Also, the term disability is mentioned only once in the 94-page booklet on ethics. Though the word ‘Dignity’ is one of the core tenets of the Rights of People with Disability Act, it hasn’t been used in the new curriculum. The curriculum itself still refers to the repealed legislation for mental health from 1987, whereas India has a new Act as of 2017. It also uses outdated language such as ‘differently abled.’
Source: The Wire.