Rs 2 lakh cashless insurance for medical students

BHOPAL: In the aftermath of a junior doctor dying of Covid-19 in November last year, the Madhya Pradesh government has decided to provide cashless medical insurance of Rs 2 lakh to all students in state-run medical colleges.

The medical education department has asked all 13 government and autonomous medical and dental colleges to ensure that students are insured at the time of admission. All medical students, aged between 18 and 35 years, will be covered under the scheme — cashless cover of Rs 2 lakh and accidental / disability cover of Rs 10 lakh.

Not only MBBS students, those pursuing super-specialisation, PG, dental and physiotherapy courses will also be insured at the time of admission. The colleges and autonomous bodies will bear the premium from their own resources, and the government won’t provide any subsidy for this, the order says.

Colleges to bear premium from own resources

The executive bodies of all 13 government / autonomous medical and dental colleges will pass a resolution for implementation of the health insurance scheme. This was a long-standing demand of medical teachers and students, which got a surge of urgency after the tragic death of a 27-year-old doctor, Shubham Upadhyay at the frontlines of the Covid battle in MP’s Sagar in November last year. His first job was at the Sagar Covid centre and he got infected in end-October.

A few days later, he was brought to Bhopal but his lungs kept deteriorating and he died around a month after infection. The state t was trying to fly him to Chennai for lungs transplant but a cyclone grounded the flight.

Source: The Times of India