Bangalore: Opening way for the foreign medical students to India, Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss on Saturday announced that the Centre Govt. would recognize foreign post-graduate degrees in medicine from the English speaking countries.

According to the Union Health Minister’s statement, the Indian doctors having their post graduate degrees in medicine from the UK, the US, Canada, England and New Zealand are allowed to practice in India.

Speaking at the convocation of National Board of Examinations under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ramadoss said, "As a move to encourage Indian doctors who pursue further tudies abroad to come back and practice here, we will ecognise foreign post-graduate degrees in medicine by English speaking countries, starting with five (countries) to begin with.” Ramadoss said, the five nations are UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, later Singapore and European countries would be included.

He said, the Union Government took a unilateral decision to recognize foreign degrees in medicine allowing Indian origin people to practice in India. "Initially it will be a unilateral recognition. As the process evolves, it will become bilateral," Ramadoss said.

He said, it doen’t come under the purview of Indian Medical Council and added that the decision would be informed to the IMA.
"In fact this unilateral decision of the union government to recognize foreign degrees in medicine would help thousand of Indian doctors in UK who are out of job because of a legislation," said the minister.

The Minister said, viewing the importance of emergency care, government would soon launch a national programme on Emergency and Trauma Care. "However, we need more human resource for this", he said.

According to the Union Health Minister, National Urban Health Mission would be launched in 429 cities and district headquarters in about four to five months. It will focus on around 5.5 crore slum population in the cities.

On the National Board of Examinations which had global recognition lacked national recognition, Ramadoss said, the ministry however recognized that DNB examination is unbiased and much more standardized than the MD or MS examination across the country and efforts would be made to solve the difficulties of parity faced by DNB candidates.

Ramadoss also said that the skull and dead body warning on the cigarette and Beedi packets would be made compulsory in three months time.