Indian Medical Service cadre is need of the hour, says expert

The National Working Committee of IMA, formed to submit the recommendation for the formation of the IMS, had submitted its 40-pages detailed report to the association. Representation pic

The Indian Medical Association's (IMA) long-listed demand for a separate cadre - Indian Medical Service (IMS) - in line with Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Police Service (IPS) and other cadres, has once again become a talking point among healthcare experts. The 21st century is the ‘century of pandemics' and it requires foresight to plan for the IMS as a new cadre of UPSC.

It should include the Public Health Management cadre to effectively respond to the pandemics and focal epidemics, say experts who are concerned about the new blue book on Public Health Management Cadre (PHMC) launched recently. mid-day in its article, ‘Centre's new health cadre booklet flawed, says health experts', dated April 20, stated the Ministry of Health's (MOH) recommendations have fallen short of expectations.

What the expert said then

The National Working Committee of IMA, which was formed to submit the recommendation for the formation of the Indian Medical Services (IMS), had submitted its 40-page detailed report to the association. A five-member team, under the chairmanship of Dr Vedprakash Mishra, national head of the Academic Programme (Indian Programme), UNESCO chairperson in Bioethics (Haifa), had worked on the modulation of structure, operation and function of IMS, constituted by Dr Rajan Sharma, national president, Indian Medical Association (IMA).

Dr Vedprakash Mishra, Chairman of the National Working Group and author of the said report had told midday earlier, "It is a matter of immense satisfaction that the Parliamentary Committee has echoed explicitly the same modality as has been brought out in the report by the National Working Group."

"The health administration cadre, apart from giving a fillip to an effective healthcare delivery system, will also streamline the entire health management system at all levels. The move will usher in a new era of its type and will entail a huge paradigm shift from the existing parochial health administrative system," Dr Mishra had said.

What the expert said now

"The modality that has been worked out upon critical appraisal and analysis reveals that the changes invoked are barely cosmetic in nature, which in operation would not make any significant change.

It seems that the lessons taught by Covid pandemic were kept aside to formulate the administrative pattern. The need of the hour is creating a cadre of ‘Indian Medical Service'. The detailed analytical report has already been formulated by the working committee constituted by the IMA, New Delhi, and is submitted to the authorities in the government," said Mishra.

IMS is needed

"Now, that India has almost one hundred schools of Public Health established across the nation, it is time that the IMS cadre is derived from the medical and public health students. Till such time, Public Health Management cadres recruited for state PH services should have a Masters or a Doctorate in Public Health," said Dr Subhash Hira, Professor of Global Health, University of Washington-Seattle and an advisor to WHO-TDR-Geneva.

Reduce red-tapism

"The document on management of public health cadres is quite comprehensive. It has classified the various cadres for appointments. However, caution needs to be exercised in the health management category. Priority and preference should be given to senior doctors who have clinical experience rather than pure administrators, especially in the health management cadres. This will reduce red-tapism and the traditional bureaucracy," said Dr Ketan Vagholkar, Professor of Surgery at DY Patil Medical College.