Medical Students in Mauritius Stare at Uncertain Future

The institute is yet to get recognition from the Medical Council of India, leaving the students in the lurch.

Two students - Sanjay Alias and Harris Joy Varghese - have dragged DY Patil Worldwide Ltd, the holding organisation of DY Patil Medical College, to the Supreme Court of Mauritius with a series of allegations including lack of infrastructure and poor quality of faculty.

The Mauritian campus of DY Patil Medical College is run by Dayanand Bapoo, husband of Sheila Bai Bapoo, minister of social security. The Mauritian cabinet on February 21 decided to set up a committee to investigate media reports and whether the provision of clinical training framework and the supplemental agreement between the ministry of health and quality of life and the DYP Worldwide Ltd are being complied with.

Mauritian Press is also agog with reports against AK Bakshi, director, Tertiary Education Commission. Bakshi, who joined TEC, had disciplinary proceedings against him by Delhi University last July. While joining TEC in October, Bakshi allegedly didn't disclose DU's action against him.

In their petition, Sanjay and Harris have alleged that DYP Worldwide Ltd coordinators in India had assured that the college would get recognition from the Medical Council of India. "The dean disclosed in a meeting on January 15 that the MCI recognition will neither happen now nor any time in near future," they said. They found that the DYP Medical College does not "even have the recognition of the Medical Council of Mauritius". The students were also not informed that they had to pass a medical registration examination, conducted by Medical Council of Mauritius, prior to their admission.

Alleging poor infrastructure, the petitioners said: "Whereas the post graduate medical college does not have any building and course is conducted from just four rooms rented from the Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital (JNH), the college building for MBBS course at Altima, Ebene, is about 30 km away from JNH."

As for the faculty, Sanjay and Harris said about a half of the surgery professors in the departments of surgery and orthopedics are retired surgeons or physically unfit to carry out surgical procedures. For instance, head of the department of surgery, has not even performed a single operative procedure and "still his name has been in files and records implying that he has done many procedures and taking the credit of the surgeries done by the efficient and hard working Mauritian doctors."