FIVE YEAR TERM BDS COURSE

FIVE YEAR TERM BDS COURSE

The Dental Council of India has sent a proposal to the Central government to increase the term of the BDS course from four years to five, incorporating a year of internship, similar to MBBS, its president Dibyendu Mazumdar said.  The proposal would be circulated to the States and responses would be sought within 15 days' time, Dr. Mazumdar added. By August 4, this process would be completed and once again forwarded to the Centre for notification. “I hope that by the end of August it would be notified by the government,” he said. When notified, the five-year programme would be implemented for BDS students in all States (other than two which already have a five-year programme) except those going into the fourth year of study during the current academic year, he explained. In preparation for this proposal, he had toured the States, and had found overwhelming response to the idea among students.

Dr. Mazumder also appealed to State governments to set up dental clinics in rural areas, in order to serve the rural population and also enhance employment opportunities for the students graduating out of the 290 dental colleges in the country every year.

The DCI president was speaking at the inaugural function of the All India Faculty Development Workshop for the speciality of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics, organised at Sri Ramachandra University here, along with the Federation of Operative Dentistry of India. Pro-Chancellor (Research), SRU, S.P. Thyagarajan said the quality of a university depended on the quality of its teachers. It is important to attract talent, continuously provide faculty development programmes and also provide performance-linked incentives for teachers, he explained, listing out the activities of the varsity. He hoped that the university's dream of reaching one of the top 10 medical varsities in South East Asia by 2020 would be realised.

K.V. Somasundaram, Dean, Faculties, and P.V. Vijayaraghavan, Dean, Education, SRU, spoke of the necessity to prime faculty to meet the increasing demand from the part of students and the expanding requirements of academics. K.V. Pradeep, president, L. Lakshminarayan, secretary general, FODI, R. Suresh, Dean, Dental Sciences, and D. Kandasamy, head, department of conservative dentistry and endodontics, spoke.

                                          Prof. John Kurakar