New Delhi: Following the Centre’s instructions to the country’s top government medical institutions, becoming a doctor at the All India Institute for Medical Sciences could become ten times costlier and patient fees will be hiked to recover current costs of providing services.
The AIIMS Resident Doctors Association have already opposed the proposal to upwardly revise tuition fees, asserting that quality education and healthcare are building blocks of society.
The decision to call for an increase in AIIMS charges come in the backdrop of a students’ agitation against the sharp hike in fees for facilities and tuition in Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Last week, the Union health ministry directed the Central Institute Body (CIB) of all AIIMSs in the country to begin the process of reviewing tuition fees and fix a uniform user charges for various facilities for patients.
“In pursuance of the directions of the Government of India (Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare), AIIMS Delhi is required to review all fees and user charges in the institute,” said a letter from AIIMS Financial Adviser, as quoted in various media reports.
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The Central Institute Body directed all its various departments and sections to submit details of charges, actual current cost and the reasons for setting user charges lower than the current costs. After receiving inputs, the CIB will decide on the revised fee structure.
The user charges for diagnostic procedures and equipment have become very expensive, since they have not been revised for 25 years, a health ministry official told news agency ANI.
The letter cited the General Financial Rules, 2017, which state that while fixing the rates of user charges, ministries and departments must recover the current cost of providing services with reasonable return on capital investment
Similarly, the news agency quoted the health ministry official as having stated that tuition fees have not been revised for more than 50 years.
According to New Indian Express, AIIMS provides the least expensive medical education in the country at Rs 6,000 per year. This could be raised up to Rs 50,000 to Rs 70,000 per year for an MBBS degree, as per officials in the human resources development (HRD) ministry.
The expenditure to train an MBBS doctor is over Rs 1.8 crore, according to department of hospital administration analysis.
The Union government allocates Rs 3,500 crore for AIIMS Delhi, while the other 14 AIIMS get around Rs 300-500 crore.
“We are asking these institutes to at least generate Rs 70-75 crore every year by charging for MBBS programmes and patients’ services,” a senior ministry official said. Currently, AIIMS Delhi generates only Rs 2-3 crore a year.
New Indian Express quoted the students union of AIIMS Delhi as having said that the students’ body will oppose any efforts to increase tuition fees. “After striking down the autonomy of apex institutes, the government is moving to make education inaccessible to the common man,” said president of AIIMS Delhi students’ union, Mukul Kumar.
Meanwhile, AIIMS Resident Doctors Association president, Dr Amarinder Malhi has issued a statement opposing the memorandum issued by the administration on revising charges. “We are against any kind of increase in the tuition fees of students and user charges for patients in all medical institutes,” he stated.
The Association’s statement asserted, “Quality education and healthcare are the building blocks of our nation and we will not allow any person, organisation or the government to compromise on them in any aspect”.
“We need educated and skilled citizens to fulfil our long-cherished dream of becoming a developed nation. This dream can be fulfilled only if both the central and state governments make quality education affordable and healthcare accessible to all citizens,” it added.
The association president urged policy makers “to think logically and take concrete steps in this direction so that our nation can fare far better than where it stands at present in the global healthcare access and quality (HAQ) index as well as the global quality Education Index (EI)”.