By Elijah Hoole –
Starting from 24 August 2020, the Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC) asked foreign medical graduates to apply for the Examination to Register to Practice Medicine (ERPM), parts A and D. Hundreds of graduates lined up outside the SLMC, paid the due fee of Rs. 20,000, and promptly completed their registration for an exam for which they had already waited for over a year.
Even though the SLMC had not declared the dates for the exam, they – reasonably – assumed it will be held within at least two months from the date of application. But the latest information from the SLMC suggests that the exam could be postponed indefinitely.
Only a thoroughly disorganized institution would call for applications without setting the exam dates. Such disorganization, however, is characteristic of the SLMC’s actions over the past years. This has repeatedly disadvantaged thousands of foreign medical graduates, including the current group of foreign graduates awaiting this phantom exam.
The Council often violates its own codes. For instance, the SLMC issued a degree approval letter to all the foreign graduates who are now waiting for the ERPM, upon our graduation, clearly stating that all four parts of the ERPM (A, B, C, D) will be held twice a year. However, the SLMC has not conducted Part A and Part D of the ERPM since July 2019.
The SLMC also repeatedly makes decisions that brazenly violate the country’s laws governing the medical practice as codified in the Medical Ordinance. This has resulted in a string of legal applications against the Council in the Appellate Courts. The courts have invariably ruled in favour of the petitioners, only for the Council – in a few cases – to then violate the rulings.
An illustrative example is the SCFR 54/2019 fundamental rights application filed by the group of 83 graduates from the South Asia Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM). The petitioners sought relief from the court against the SLMC’s arbitrary refusal to register them as provisional members of the practice, in violation of an earlier Supreme Court ruling. The resulting interim order prevented the internship of more than a hundred foreign medical graduates who were not a direct party to the dispute and had fulfilled SLMC’s criteria for commencing medical internship. The affected graduates had to intervene as respondents, incurring legal expenses, to secure their training. This caused a further three-month delay to their eventual internship appointment, after having waited nearly a year to sit for the ERPM after graduating.
The SLMC, in late 2018, sought to prevent a few foreign medical graduates from completing the ERPM – after these graduates had already sat for a significant portion of the exam following admission by the same Council – by retrospectively imposing a new arbitrary pre-entry Advanced Level qualification midway. When the affected students challenged this at the Supreme Court under cases SCFR 145/2019 and SCFR 149/2019, the resulting interim order prevented the results of the completed exam portions from being released. Eventually, the Supreme Court held with the Petitioners and ruled that the Council had acted arbitrarily in imposing a pre-entry qualification overriding the purview of powers which has been granted to it by the Medical Ordinance. These cases caused an additional four-month delay in the internship appointments for the hundreds of foreign medical graduates who had met even the new pre-entry requirement.
In the lead up to the first session of ERPM for 2019, the SLMC once again blocked several other foreign graduates from sitting for the ERPM based on an earlier pre-entry qualification it had set in 2010; in contravention to the current pre-entry qualification for medical education approved elsewhere in law by Parliament. The victims challenged the matter in court and the case is purportedly the reason for not conducting Part A and Part D since July 2019, even though the court had not issued an interim order preventing the timely conduct of the ERPM for the remaining qualified candidates in the batch. In four separate responses to an RTI request by some of these candidates, however, the SLMC attributed the delay to the pending court case and a non-existent stay order imposing the same. The Supreme Court delivered its verdicts on these cases (SCFR 399/19, SCFR 400/19, SCFR 442/19, SCFR 443/19, SCFR 444/19, SCFR 459/19) on 23 July 2020, ruling that the SLMC being a creation of the Medical Ordinance has no authority to set entry criteria for foreign medical universities in violation of the provisions of the Medical Ordinance and ordered the SLMC to grant permission to petitioners to sit for the exam.
Since July 2019, three groups of foreign medical graduates have arrived in Sri Lanka. Some of these graduates rejected attractive foreign internships and the option of practicing abroad to work in Sri Lanka. In an era where Sri Lanka suffers from severe brain drain and a shortage of medical officers in the healthcare system, the SLMC and the local medical system at large have treated those who made the difficult decision to return to Sri Lanka with absolute disregard.
The apex court of this country has repeatedly found the SLMC’s positions on key questions such as: (i) Should there be a minimum Advanced Level results requirement for registering foreign medical graduates? (ii) Should universities that accept students that do not meet SLMC’s own pre-entry Advanced Level results requirements remain recognized the by SLMC? (iii) Should graduates from (local) private medical colleges be able to practice? – to run foul of the Medical Ordinance. In multiple rulings, the Supreme Court has reprimanded the SLMC for usurping the powers of the Parliament, ultra vires enacting arbitrary rules that violate principles of natural justice, and failing to uphold constitutionally guaranteed equality of treatment, in particular, for foreign medical graduates.
The Ceylon Medical Council has been functioning since 1924 (renamed Sri Lanka Medical Council in 1998). Similarly, foreign medical graduates entering the country’s health system is not a new phenomenon: doctors trained abroad were part of the system even prior to independence. Why then is the pathway for incorporating foreign medical graduates into the healthcare system still fraught with such difficulty and injustice? Is it fair for the SLMC to hold as hostage those foreign medical graduates who have fulfilled its own arbitrary standards, citing pending cases filed by petitioners disadvantaged by the same contradictory rules? Why should hundreds of foreign medical graduates, despite meeting every requirement, pay the price for SLMC’s failure to operate within the framework of the Medical Ordinance?
When the statutory body established for the purpose of maintaining the ‘academic and professional standards, discipline and ethical practice’ of the medical profession in the country conducts itself in this unruly, arbitrary manner, it calls into question the integrity of the profession itself.
Sinhala_Man / September 22, 2020
Young Elijah,
If it is, many thanks for having written all that.
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I hope that things turn out all right for all of us.
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May I ask who the older man who appears on the display page is? Your pater?
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Best wishes from this village near Bandarawela.
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old codger / September 23, 2020
The SLMC and the GMOA exist for the sole purpose of maintaining the closed shop in the local medical profession. They have the gall to proclaim that their standards are higher than those of reputed institutions in countries like Russia. We know quite well that Indian doctors perform operations in private hospitals that local doctors can’t carry out. Foreign grads are kept out because they would eat into the already exorbitant income of the GMOA members. How many doctors pay taxes?
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SJ / September 26, 2020
OC
Do Medical Councils or their equivalent in other countries such as Australia, Canada, UK etc have an open policy in such matters?
Often local examinations and additional experience are required.
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Ii is quite another matter if there is inconsitancy, partiality or discriminatory treatment.
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old codger / September 26, 2020
SJ,
It is true that foreign countries also run closed shops in professions, even down to electricians and plumbers in Australia or USA. But they can truthfully claim that they have higher standards /advanced knowledge. Nor are they as inconsistent as the SLMC, or as politicised as the GMOA, I think.
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leelagemalli / September 27, 2020
Oc;
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Civilized countries have introduced better systems whatever the problem they would have been facing in such situations. Huge USA is though civlized, their health systems are beyond unimaginable levels in some provinces. This I get to know drirectly from our colleagues in the states. They are not srilankens but indgenous amies. Many of them dream of a better health system.
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However, It is no correct to compare it that of a hungry nation as ours. Srilanken poverty levels are covered by Rajapakshe statistics for their own survivals so that anyone down their could see, that they have achieved lot more in poverty allevaition in the country. But the truth is they have only filled thier pockets on and on. As RW made it clear that over 40% of the population live under poverty levels.
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Lasantha Pethiyagoda / September 25, 2020
Sri Lankans in general have quite low social values now compared to several decades earlier. Their ethical standards have also fallen to new lows. One overriding tenet in their social behaviour is of jealousy and envy. Jealousy is the more insidious of the two emotions and will enter all institutions regardless of status. There is now no longer a prestige in the healing profession. Neither is there a nobility and compassion that is derived from the highest human ideals. Medicine is also largely a business with lucre, justified in not deciding to seek greener pastures elsewhere. Therefore, the endemic jealousy will preclude any candidate from competing or demonstrating superior skills or knowledge to the mediocre local levels. This would help explain the intransigence of these institutions that specialise in stonewalling.
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Native Vedda / September 26, 2020
Lasantha Pethiyagoda
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” One overriding tenet in their social behaviour is of jealousy and envy. “
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You are completely right.
For example the many measures imposed by various Acts and administrative arrangement proved what you have mentioned above, for example 1948 Citizenship Act, 1956 Sinhala only Official language Act, standardisation for University entry, development model, recruitment to state institutions, the stupid claim that this country being Sinhala/Buddhists, majority right, ….. and the riots and destruction of of assets of minority, ………… politically motivated justice, ……
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This is because the saffron driven political leadership based their Nation Building strategy on Anagarika Homeless Dharmapala Model.
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This development model has been delivering man made disasters throughout post independence years than any progress.
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leelagemalli / September 26, 2020
Dear LP,
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You may be right.
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The reason could be the media. Today s media are highly biased. They dont care much about the truthfulness of the news, but they telecast them. People are highly dependent on TV news. Not many are used to read news papers. Those were the days that we waited to read them specially on the weekends. My elders were waiting for new paper man. The culture was so different and, I would say, respectful and dignfied. Today they just rely on any kind of news headlines being passed by irresponsible TV senders.
If anyone would destroy TV and Derana media stations tomorrow, the outcome would be favourable in the line of improvement of awareness among the masses. No doubt about that.
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