Why is homoeopathy unpopular among Maharashtra students? Lack of jobs, govt support

mumbai

Updated: Nov 05, 2017 01:04 IST

As many as 870 of 3,695 seats for the undergraduate course in homoeopathy (BHMS) were left vacant after the centralised admission process (CAP) for health science courses in Maharashtra came to an end on October 31.

Aspirants will have a final chance to claim the vacant seats at the ‘institutional’ round of admission, where they are required to directly apply to individual colleges.

While the aspirants are spoilt for choice when it comes to homoeopathy colleges, most of the seats for the two other courses in alternative medicine — ayurveda (BAMS) and unani (BUMS) — have been filled.

There are around 20,000 seats for various undergraduate health science courses, including MBBS and BDS, across the state.

The aspirants are admitted to all courses except BSc Nursing on the basis of their scores in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET). The admission to the three alternative medical courses is carried out through a common CAP.

According to experts, there have been large-scale vacancies in BHMS for the past few years, as the demand for the course has dwindled.

Pradeep Sethiya, vice principal, DS Homeopathetic College, Pune, attributed this trend to limited job opportunities and a lack of government support for homoeopathy.

“There is a supply and demand mismatch in homoeopathy. The government favoured some private organisations unnecessarily, by allowing them to start new colleges. There’s not a single government-run homeopathy college in the state,” he said.

While the state runs 20 ayurveda and three unani colleges, all the 49 homeopathy colleges in the state are run privately.

Experts added that many students were discouraged from choosing homoeopathy after the central government, earlier this year, made it mandatory for BHMS graduates to do a year-long course in pharmacology if they wanted to prescribe allopathic medicines.

The perception of homoeopathy as a ‘pseudoscience’ is also said to have also contributed to its declining demand, said experts.

“European countries have declared homoeopathy to be ineffective. BHMS is often the last choice for medical aspirants,” said Muzaffar Khan, a Thane-based medical education counsellor

However, Sethiya refuted the claim that homoeopathy’s negative reputation had an impact on the enrolment.

“Students have observed the huge response that homoeopathy doctors get and decide to become one,” he said.