The National Medical Commission (NMC) seems to be not keen on enforcing the original ‘Charak Shapath’ it had proposed for undergraduate medical students while they are being initiated into the profession.
The Draft Regulations for registered medical practitioners, recently put in the public domain by the Ethics and Medical Registration Board of the NMC, do not have any reference to the oath attributed to the ancient Indian sage, Maharshi Charak. Instead, they have included Geneva Declarations of 2017, called the ‘Physician’s Pledge’. These regulations, once approved after incorporating changes and suggestions from people, stakeholders, experts, and organisations, are going to be binding on doctors.
The NMC’s reported move to enforce Charak Shapath had snowballed into a controversy, with organisations such as the Indian Medical Association opposing it. The dean of a medical college in Madurai in Tamil Nadu was removed from his post earlier this month after first-year students took the ‘shapath’. He was reinstated after an apology was tendered.
