The NTR University of Health Science (NTRUHS) will fall in line with the Dental Council of India's directive to change the syllabus for the Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) from next academic year. The new syllabus has envisaged doing away with the internship programme.

Officials in the State Health Ministry, said here on Friday, the Dental Council of India (DCI) had already notified for changing the regulations and syllabus for the BDS and directed all the Universities to implement it from the next academic year.

DCI executive committee member B H Sripathi Rao, when he visited the State in the first week of this month, directed the authorities of the NTRUHS to switch over to the new system from the next academic year. All the groundwork for switching over to the new system should be completed well before the next academic year.

Students of the BDS are now required to study all five years to get the degree. Internship programme would be done away with. No other country has the system of internship for the BDS students.

The new syllabus would be more student-friendly. Workshops would be conducted for the faculty members to get acquainted with the new syllabus. The new system would position the dentists on a par with their counterparts abroad. The syllabus in the country remained old though it had undergone change in the developed countries, the officials said.

As many as 18 institutions in the State are offering under-graduate courses in dentistry and seven of them are offer post-graduate courses.