Experts say revised medical curriculum guidelines are no better than first version, demand another round of review and corrections

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| Photo Credit: JOTHI RAMALINGAM B

The National Medical Commission (NMC) has reissued its Competency-Based Medical Education Curriculum (CBME-2024) guidelines for MBBS students following uproar from persons with disabilities and the transgender community over the use of certain terms in its original set of guidelines.

Last month, the NMC had to withdraw the guidelines after protests were raised about their infringing on the rights of persons with disabilities and transgender persons. The revised version too has come under fire from the protesting groups that said: “This 466-word document has no mention of key terms such as ‘dignity’ or ‘transgender’.” The groups have now written to all stakeholders demanding immediate revision of the norms.

The NMC is the apex body in the country responsible for regulating medical education in the country. It had released its new CBME curriculum on August 31, which was met with objections from the disability, transgender and queer communities and was withdrawn within a week.

Satendra Singh, a disability rights activist, told The Hindu, that during the two-week foundation course, while eight hours is dedicated to “sports”, there is no explicit mention of disability competencies. Training on disability competencies was mandatory in the 2019 curriculum (seven hours) but has now been removed. Psychiatry continues to refer to “gender identity disorders” and physiology describes sexual differentiation/intersex variations as “abnormalities”. Furthermore, paediatrics fails to address gender incongruence, dysphoria, or non-heterosexual orientations, etc. Dr. Singh further added that the subjects focus solely on the management of “disability” without acknowledging diversity.

The revised document has now dropped lesbianism, sodomy, and other such acts from the MBBS syllabus.

In the new syllabus, the medical body has included topics related to the histories of gender, and sexuality-based identities and rights in India, as well as the decriminalisation of adultery and consensual adult homosexual behaviour. The revised curriculum remains unchanged however, on guidelines related to teaching hours, attendance, and the National Exit Test (NExt).

Meanwhile, disability and transgender rights groups have demanded re-introduction of the mandatory hours on disability competencies, introducing provisions of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, and the Transgender Persons Protection Act, 2019 in the curriculum of ethics with case studies giving cultural context on disability, transgender, intersex, and queer persons with a focus on intersectionality and has asked for the involvement of involve health professionals and students from the disability, and queer community for such revisions.