Severely-Disabled People Can Now Pursue Medical Science

Physically disabled students can finally fulfil their dream of becoming a doctor. The Medical Council of India (MCI) has decided to permit 21 categories of even severely-disabled people to take next year’s graduate and post-graduate medical courses. These include blindness, low-vision, hearing impairment, locomotor disability, dwarfism, intellectual disability, multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy.

MCI secretary Reena Nayyar told HT that the members decided to implement the country’s newly revised disability law.“The ministry of social justice and empowerment is in the process of framing rules to specify medical job roles for different categories of disability,” she said.

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Until now, the MCI permitted only candidates with below 70% disability of the lower limbs to study medicine, although the condition contravened all disability-related laws in the country. This compelled such students to wage individual legal battles for admission to medical schools.

The council argued that people with severe disability were unfit for studying medicine.

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Keeping up with changing times

At its October meeting, MCI members resolved that times had changed and with the progress in science it did not make sense to bar disabled people from becoming doctors any more.