There is urgent need for greater attention to gender dimensions in medical education all over the world, said Prof. K Mohandas, vice chancellor, Kerala University of Health Sciences, Trissur. He was delivering the convocation address of Sri Ramachandra University in Chennai.

Social inequalities have a profound adverse effect on health and health care delivery. Perhaps the most neglected and the least understood among them, and the one that is prevalent universally, is the differential impact of gender on disease and health care seeking behaviour.

Admittedly the impact is more on women but men are also not immune to it.  The Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram has prepared a modified curriculum incorporating gender mainstreaming in all subjects of the MBBS course. He hoped that Sri Ramachandra University will seriously consider adopting this engendered training programme in its curriculum.

Prof. Mohandas called for re-engineering healthcare eduction to bring preservation and promotion of health as the centre piece of health professional training because curative medicine is ultimately counter productive. According to him, health professional education is passing through a crisis of quality, integrity and acute scarcity of committed and competent teachers due to rapid and chaotic expansion of the sector. He called upon the young graduates to take to teaching and research and help mould the future generations.

Earlier in his report, the vice chancellor, Sri Ramachandra University, Dr J S N Murthy said Sri Ramachandra University started new courses in the current year in B.Sc. in sports and exercise sciences in collaboration with the University of Cape Town, South Africa, DM critical care, DM reproductive medicine, M. Pharm pharmacology and M. Pharm pharmaceutical analysis.

Next year the university proposes to start new courses in DM Neuroradiology, DM Endocrinology and M.Ch. vascular surgery and post doctoral certificate course (PDCC) in interventional radiology.

Sri Ramachandra Medical Centre won the award for “Best patient safety initiative 2012” at the International Congress on Patient Safety-best practices for Asia, out of 27 prominent national hospital entries at a conference held in Hyderabad recently, he added.