NEET Counselling: India Can’t Fight Omicron Without Its Resident Doctors

The availability of beds alone will not treat patients – it is the doctors manning the beds who are important.

Over the years, if there is one subject that has remained in the headlines perennially, even more regularly than the ubiquitous Indian elections, it is the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). Despite the Supreme Court being in the thick of things one way or the other for several years, first with having given some decisions and then reviewing and later retracting the same, the matter has been simmering for long.

As things stand now, junior doctors, after having exhausted all peaceful measures to draw the attention of the government over the delay in the NEET-PG 2021 counselling, have threatened to submit mass resignations. Most unfortunately, the Delhi police have chosen to use their brutal power against the peacefully protesting group of doctors, who they know are not in a position to retaliate by force, because for this class called ‘healers’, saving life and public good comes first and their personal agenda later.

Govt's 'Fake Promises'

For the political class, these doctors are irrelevant because they do not have the same traction as the farmers who sat on dharna for a year and eventually had their way. The affected resident doctors at various teaching hospitals in the capital said they resumed the strike and were forced to take to the street as the government had made a "fake promise" to expedite the court hearing. Resident doctors in some other parts of the country have gone on strike at different times on the same issue. While resident doctors’ associations in a few states are raising their voice against the EWS and OBC reservation in the All India Quota, others are expressing their disappointment on the delay in counselling.

Here, by going on strike, the doctors are not asking for better emoluments or even better working conditions. They simply want to drive home a point that without resident doctors, it would be virtually impossible to run healthcare services, especially in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, the gateway to their recruitment, that is, NEET counselling, should be allowed to open.

The importance and urgency of the matter should be lost on no one, least of all the agencies that wield power and authority.

Firstly, because of the lockdown and the disastrous second wave of infections caused by the Delta variant of COVID-19, most part of the academic year has already been lost for most postgraduate and post-doctoral course students, who are also resident doctors. And now, the NEET counselling has already been delayed for eight months, putting another academic year in jeopardy for these 45,000 students.

Availability of Beds Isn't All

It is imperative for all stakeholders to realise that the pandemic is not over yet. In fact, the third wave of COVID-19 with the highly transmissible Omicron variant is at our doorstep. There are pictures in media showing that health facilities are being readied for intake of patients. But the availability of the beds alone will not treat patients – it is the doctors manning the beds and the machines who are desperately needed. They are needed today and not after the result of the next hearing of the Supreme Court in the matter in January 2022, that too, if the judgment is delivered.

Already, the healthcare services are cracking because of a lack of manpower. A huge load of patients in the coming few weeks to months is likely to break the proverbial back of the healthcare delivery system in India unless some very urgent and swift measures are undertaken.

Desperate situations call for desperate measures. Some of the suggestions that could be acted upon are to invoke the provisions of the Disaster Management Act (DMA), 2005, and the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, as amended, both of which give wide-ranging powers to the government. The DMA, which was enacted with the objective “to provide for the effective management of disasters and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto” has been used earlier also to tackle the pandemic. However, nothing could be more effective than getting the residents to join by expediting the NEET counselling, in order to tackle the impending disaster staring at us.

Another way to resolve this issue could be promulgating an ordinance for an urgent NEET PG counselling across the country, pending the final settlement of some time-consuming issues at hand, by the Supreme Court.

The government and all other stakeholders should garner the will to find a way to solve this conundrum.

(The author is an adjunct professor in gastroenterology, ESIC Medical College, Faridabad and Director at the Centre for Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy, Max Super Speciality Hospital, New Delhi. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)