Docs with foreign degrees find Indian medical tests difficult: Stats

According to reports, it is difficult for students with medical degrees from other countries to pass the screening test to practice in India. The percentage of students taking the test has doubled but the pass percentage has plummeted from 50.12% to 10.7% in 2015.

According to Times of India report, the Supreme Court's decision on NEET is expected to have far-reaching consequences. As NEET's implementation has been deferred by a year, a large number of students are expected to enroll in colleges in Russia, China, and Ukraine, where admissions are easier and courses cheaper, according to reports.

According to a report in the daily, the mandatory screening test held by the National Board of Examination has recorded a drop in all-time percentage of 4.93% in 2014 June. Whereas, there has been an 80 per cent drop between 2005 - 2015. Citizens, according to the Indian Medical Council Act, 2001, with undergraduate degrees from foreign countries should pass the screening test which is conducted twice every year in June and December before interning with the MCI recognised medical colleges.

TOI quoted Raghuram Nayak, a student, who graduated in Ukraine in 2012, as saying, "Most questions are from postgraduate medical tests."The students' association of foreign medical graduate claim that the board has discouraged the students to go abroad for further studies and wants the students to study in private colleges in India which would cost them more than rupees 1 crore.An expert committee submitted a report to the ministry of health stating that 52.78 per cent of the questions were of "low difficulty" whereas, 42.22 per cent questions were of "moderate difficulty, TOI reported.

Denying the false accusation of difficult question which appears in the paper, Dr Bipin Batra, the Board executive director, said the test had no negative marking and most students find it difficult because public health priorities of other nations are different from ours.