Medical Curriculum Revision Faces Backlash for Omitting Disability, Transgender Rights
Disability rights activists and transgender advocates have questioned the rejection of provisions outlined in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPDA), 2016, and the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act (TPA), 2019 in the National Medical Commission's changes Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) Curriculum.
Expressing their distress, the leaders of disability and transgender communities wrote a letter to Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Dr. Virendra Kumar. The Central Advisory Board on Disability Chairperson Dr. Satendra Singh and Association for Transgender Health in India CEO Air Commodore (Retd.) confine the letter and Dr. Sanjay Sharma pointed out how the new curriculum, published on August 31, 2024, ignores the critical problem that these marginalized groups are facing.
"The curriculum has been deemed outdated and old, violating the Supreme Court judgments and previous guidelines," described in the letter. This issue has had a huge impact and also got extensive media coverage, voice was raised at peak level in the withdrawal of the curriculum on Teachers' Day, September 5, 2024. The revised curriculum was re-published on Thursday, the activists are dissatisfied with its drawback in appropriately handling transgender health issues and integrating disability skills.
Unsustainable development goals
It is stated in the letter that despite a senior NMC member recognizing the error the curriculum was not modified at the initial level. One of the key absences in the 466-page document is the absence of important terms like "transgender" and "dignity". The curriculum includes eight hours of sports during the foundation course but eliminates the previously required seven hours of disability competencies.
Also, terms like "gender identity disorders" continue to appear in psychiatry, while physiology continues to describe intersex variations as "abnormalities".There can be more significant implications to this exclusion. The letter highlighted the fact that the RPDA needs university instructors, physicians, nurses, and paramedical staff to help with disability rights in their curricula. The exclusion of these competencies which were earlier part of the 2019 curriculum is not only a setback for disability rights but also undermines India's commitment to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 10), which aim to reduce inequality.
Competency-based medical education
The letter also highlighted the importance of transgender-inclusive healthcare as compulsory by the TPA, 2019. Section 15 of the Act requires medical curricula to access transgender-specific health issues, including creating a health manual for sex reassignment surgeries. However, the new curriculum completely ignores the health requirements of transgender people which focuses on a binary understanding of gender.
The protestor requested Dr. Kumar to come in and re-establish mandatory disability competencies before the start of the new MBBS session on October 14.
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