Around 30,000 aspiring PG (Post Graduation) dentistry students across India, whose skill could be used in the pandemic to help treat patients, have been kept twiddling their thumbs at home due to red tape. This is because their admission process to the PG course has not started yet, though the results of the entrance exam were declared four months ago.

Why the delay

In a regular medicine course, a graduate doctor has to clear the National Entrance and Eligibility Test (NEET) for the PG course. For post-graduation in dentistry, he/she is required to clear the MDS exam. This exam is generally held a month or so before NEET PG, but the admission processes for both run simultaneously. This time the MDS exam was held in December 2020 and its results were declared by the end of that month. But the NEET PG is four months away and authorities are adamant on beginning the admission processes for both at the same time. Until that happens, neither can these graduate dentists assist in dental clinics, as they are asked for a commitment of two years; nor can they ask to join Covid-19 duty (in a PG course every student will have to be on Covid-19 duty at the hospital he/she is studying at, and so these students can’t ask for it now).