With the Medical Council of India (MCI) approving the three-and-half year Bachelor of Science (Community Health) course to meet the demand of healthcare personnel in the rural areas, the Union health ministry is planning to introduce it in the interested states from the academic year of 2013-14.

The ministry has written to the states in this regard with a view to know which states are interested in starting the course. Besides, the ministry has also urged the state governments to create separate cadres in the public health institutions to appoint those completing this course, sources said.

Meanwhile, the MCI has already cleared the proposal for the course as the government wanted to have the stamp of the MCI on the certificates. The course will be open to the students after class 12.

This cadre of health workers will be trained in district hospitals and will be placed in sub-centres or primary health centres and will be taught "some module of clinical work". They will be trained to diagnose and treat basic medical cases, apart from getting involved in immunization programmes.

“The purpose of the proposed short term course is to generate a cadre of health care providers who, by the virtue of the way they are chosen, trained, deployed and supported, will be motivated to live in and provide comprehensive primary health care in the rural areas at the sub-centre level. Admissions as well as deployment of these graduates would be district based and reservation in admission would apply as per the norms of the respective state government. It has also been left to the state governments to decide the upper age limit of students seeking admission to the course,” according to the health ministry.

Health secretary P K Pradhan had convened a high level meeting some time back to finalise the modalities of this course which was strongly backed by the expert group of the Planning Commission as a measure to beef up manpower in the rural areas. The commission had also suggested that the graduates of this course could be promoted to the level of public health officers after 10 years of service.