MMC authorities remove medical students halfway through CME programme on LGBTQIA+

At a time when inclusiveness of the LGBTQIA+ community in every field is being discussed at all levels, Madurai Medical College students were removed midway from a programme conducted at the college to spread awareness from a medical perspective.  

A Continuing Medical Education (CME) programme on topic ‘Unlocking Understanding: An Update of LGBTQIA+’ was organised by the Madurai Medical College Alumni Association and was conducted on the college premises on Saturday, reliable sources told The Hindu.  

A. Savior Selva Suresh, secretary, MMC Alumni Association, said that as a tradition of the college, each batch would be conducting an alumni association annual event every year in December.

“As part of that, year-long events like CME programmes would be conducted for the students and this programme was one such event,” he added.  

“Seminars on various topics to widen students’ knowledge on medicine field were conducted. Accordingly, to give them an understanding of the complications of understanding LGBTQIA+ and medical procedures related to the community, this programme was planned,” he said. 

Further, Dr. Savior said that the event was conducted only after securing prior permission from the college authorities. “For unknown reasons, earlier this week, upon the instruction of Madurai Medical College Dean (Full Additional Charge) V. Selvarani, MBBS students who registered for the event were instructed by the authorities not to attend the event,” he alleged.  

Hearing this, the alumni association members sought permission once again from Dr. Selvarani to permit the seminar. Following this, she instructed that only the final year MBBS students may attend the event, he said.  

When all this happened and the event was started with the guests on board as per the invitation, members of the Tamil Nadu Government Doctors’ Association intervened and asked the students to leave the hall, he said.

“The reason cited was that non-medical professionals were invited for the seminar.” They said that activists were not allowed to address the students, he added.

But, he said that out of the five speakers, three were doctors from the field of psychiatry, urology and general medicine and the other two were researchers and activists associated closely with the community members in the welfare and their development.  

“The purpose of inviting them was to give the students a humanistic perspective about the community members as they would have to work closely with them as a medical profession. We did not find any mistake in inviting them as it is not going to misguide the students in anyway,” Dr. Savior said.

“The authorities should not prevent the students from learning new things,” he added. 

One of the speakers, Azhagu Jagan, founder of Aniyam Foundation, said, they were invited only to enhance the medical students’ understanding of the LGBQTIA+.

“We are not just random members as we work closely with the State government and many educational institutions to educate and demystify topics surrounding such members,” Mr. Jagan noted.  

The interruption of the doctors to stop the event was insulting and this has happened at a time when the State government and higher courts were issuing orders to formulate schemes and policies to better the members’ livelihood, he added.

Dr. Selvarani said they informed the organisers clearly that non-medical professionals should not be invited as a norm for CME programmes, but despite that, they continued with the programme.

“Once we learned about the programme conducted with the same speakers, we had to interrupt and remove the students from the events,” she added.

Published - September 28, 2024 08:49 pm IST