Severe disability now no hurdle in medical studies

MCI’s decision to implement revised law will open doors for students with conditions such as blindness, sclerosis

Physical disability will no longer be grounds to prevent a person from becoming a doctor, bringing the curtain down on a two-decade-long battle between specially-abled students and India’s medical studies regulator.

The Medical Council of India (MCI) will now allow 21 categories of even severely disabled candidates to take next year’s graduate and post-graduate medical courses, a landmark shift in its policy after a severe stricture from the apex court in August.

These include blindness, lowvision, hearing impairment, locomotor disability, dwarfism, intellectual disability, multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy.

MCI secretary Reena Nayyar told HT that a decision was made at the council’s general body meeting on October 31 to implement in toto the country’s newly revised disability law. “The ministry of social justice and empowerment is in the process of fram- ing rules to specify medical job roles for different categories of disability,” she said.

Until now, the MCI allowed only candidates with below 70% disability of the lower limbs to study medicine, forcing such students to wage individual legal battles for admission to medical schools.

The council argued that people with severe disability were not good enough to study medicine.

In its October meeting, MCI members resolved that times had changed and with progress in science it did not make sense to bar disabled people from becoming doctors any more. The MCI’s decades-old stand barring physically challenged students from its courses reflected a wider apathy in Indian society towards the disabled and elderly.