By Sampat G. Samritan
Vijayawada: The AP Medical Council has advised medical graduates from foreign universities to end their protest and attend to their duties. It promised them to take up their issues with the National Medical Commission. Council chairman Dr Srihari Rao along with registrar Dr Ramesh addressed media persons here on Friday to explain the NMC norms for grant of permanent registration to foreign medical graduates. He said that counseling was held for those who passed FMG examination conducted by the national board of examinations, New Delhi, in January 2023 in the first attempt. Medical colleges were allotted to them in AP as per directions from the NMC. FMGs, who completed their medicine course completely offline in a foreign country and came back to India due to Covid-19 or due to the Ukraine war, and then went back to complete their course, have been allotted internships for a year. However, the FMGs who came back to India and continued a part of their medicine course online and did not go back to the university abroad where they were studying earlier, were allotted two years of internship, he said. The chairman clarified that the FMGs who studied online in the final year of medicine would have to do one year clerkship and one year internship. This norm is to be implemented. Accordingly, instructions were issued to the principals of all medical colleges to enlighten the FMGs about the norm. Accordingly, many FMGs continued to do internships for the second year also. The chairman said, however, some FMGs who were unwilling to do the second year of internship moved AP high court. The court, in turn, made it clear that norms issued by both the Centre and NMC should be followed with regard to online and offline study. It ruled that the compensation certificate submitted by the FMGs was devoid of any merit and dismissed the case. Moreover, an FMG filed an appeal, the arguments on it were over, and the verdict was reserved, he said and added that following this development, some FMGs completed their two years of internship and clerkship. The chairman said that as some FMGs started staging a protest, the health minister visited them and talked to them. Based on the directions from the minister, we are proceeding to the NMC to take up the matter with it and to resolve it, he said.