Pediatrics and community medicine

IMNCI has been accepted as part of undergraduate curriculum in India and the same has been reflected in this document. I have the following suggestions to share.

1. IMNCI is being reflected as part of Pediatrics teaching curriculum only, while recommendations are for teaching the skills in both pediatrics and Community medicine and repetition of same during internship. The same needs to be reflected in the document.

2. Evaluation done by GOI recommends that some marks be kept reserved for IMNCI in the final exam for facilitating learning and needs to be reflected in the document.

3. IMNCI is integration of most common morbidities and mortalities in the outpatient care and needs to be reflected that way. That means as per evaluation report IMNCI teaching is to be initiated first and then individual conditions such as Diarrhoea, ARI etc to complement the missing issues and not to teach by two different ways as is being reflected.

4. IMNCI has almost all the skill based components of IYCF. Gujarat has suggested an integrated approach where some of the additional knowledge is provided as additional lectures without duplicating the same.

Dr Harish Kumar
NPO(CHD)WHO, India