Foreign Medical Graduates Can Finish Internship In India After Test

Foreign medical graduates with unfinished internships due to compelling situations that are beyond their control, like Covid and the ongoing Ukraine war, can finish it in India after clearing a screening test, India's medical regulatory body said today. In a circular, the National Medical Commission (NMC) said that considering the "agony and stress" faced by these students, their applications may be processed by the state medical councils provided the candidates have cleared the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination before applying for completion of internship in India.

The move is set to benefit hundreds of Indian medical students in Ukraine who had to abandon their studies and return to India as Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the former Soviet republic.

The decision was already under process, coincidently it has come at the time of the Ukraine crisis, news agency ANI said quoting sources.

"The state medical councils should ensure the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE) conducted by the National Board of Examination (NBE) should be cleared by the candidates seeking registration in India. If the candidate is found fulfilling criteria, provisional registration may be granted by the state medical councils for a 12 months' internship or balance period, as the case may be," the circular said.

The NMC said the state medical councils should obtain an undertaking from the medical college that no fee is charged by it from the foreign medical graduates (FMGs) for permitting them to do their internship.

"The stipend and other facilities to FMGs should be extended equivalent to Indian medical graduates being trained at the government medical colleges as fixed by the appropriate authority," it said. 

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) had yesterday written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya urging the Centre to adjust all evacuated Indian medical students in existing medical schools in the country through an appropriate disbursed distribution.

"All the evacuated medical education learners who are Indian Citizens and have procured admissions there upon seeking eligibility certificate from the statutory authorities in India and at various stages of progression there be adjusted as a onetime measure in existing medical schools in the country through an appropriate disbursed distribution keeping in mind the geographic locational interest of the said learner directing that the said incorporation in the concerned medical college being one time should not be taken as an increase in the annual intake capacity and should be permitted to go in for progression in the respective Indian Medical Schools for the remainder of their MBBS Course," the IMA's letter read.

"The analogy of the aforesaid proposition is drawn on the basis of explicit modality which is availed in the Indian context in case of closure of an ongoing medical college in India whereby the students already admitted thereat they 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 not to be quoted as a precedence and construed as an augmentation or increase in the annual intake capacity of the add on admitting medical college in any manner," it added.