NMC Withdraws CBME 2024 after Protests by Transgender and Disability Rights Groups
NEW DELHI, Sept 5: The National Medical Commission (NMC) has withdrawn the Competency Based Medical Education Curriculum (CBME) Guidelines, 2024 published recently.
In its notice issued on Thursday the Commission said: “It is informed that the Circular issuing Guidelines under Competency Based Medical Education Curriculum (CBME) 2024, stands withdrawn and cancelled with immediate effect. The above guidelines will be revised and uploaded in due course.”
Trans-gender and disability rights groups have been protesting against the calling it “outright ableist transphobic.” The groups had written to the Health Ministry seeking its urgent intervention for rectifying the error.
The groups have pointed out that as per the CBME 2024 sodomy and lesbianism are sexual offences while transvestism (cross-dressing) is a sexual perversion; the mandatory seven hours of disability competencies have been excluded from the foundation course — these are among the significant issues requiring correction in the guidelines for MBBS students.
CBME 2024 was to supersede the earlier NMC guidelines on curriculum and was due to be implemented from the MBBS batch of 2024-25. Transgender and disability rights groups have protested against the revised curriculum and have said they would be writing to the NMC to urgently rectify the “errors,’’ failing which they would write to World Federation for Medical Education to temporarily suspend the NMC’s recognition status.
According to Dr Satendra Singh who headed the Doctors with Disabilities: Agents of Change group, which works for the welfare for doctors with disabilities, pointed to the legal issues with the new curriculum. “The NMC is in violation of the Transgender Persons Protection Act, 2019. After being admonished by the Madras High Court and Kerala High Court, the Commission issued a letter to all medical universities on October 13, 2021, instructing them to not approve unscientific, derogatory and discriminatory information on the LGBTQ community. Yet, under these new regulations, the NMC requires faculty to teach MBBS students in forensic medicine that sodomy and lesbianism are sexual offences and transvestism (cross-dressing) is a sexual perversion,” Dr Singh said.
Moreover, the inclusion of disability rights was highlighted as a mandatory competency in 2019 by the NMC. “However, the Commission has now suddenly removed the mandatory seven hours of disability competencies from the Foundation Course in its new regulations, which violates the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPDA), 2016,” Dr Singh added.
“Section 39 (2)(f) of the RPDA mandates the inclusion of the rights of persons with disabilities in the curriculum of universities, colleges and schools. Section 47 (1)(b) further requires the integration of disability as a component in all educational courses for university teachers, doctors, nurses, and paramedical personnel.
“The curriculum’s sole focus on the management of disabilities reinforces the NMC’s outdated and archaic emphasis on the medical model of disability rather than the human rights model of disability. Why must doctors from the disability and transgender communities repeatedly take the NMC to court to ensure the implementation of laws that are already mandated?’’ the group asked.
The NMC on its part had earlier maintained that it has evolved the curriculum from the 2019 version, making it “more learner-centric, patient-centric, gender-sensitive, outcome-oriented and environment appropriate.”
(Manas Dasgupta)
