New Delhi: Doctors With Disabilities, a network of health professionals with disabilities, has criticised the new curriculum handbook for physiotherapy for using outdated and derogatory terms for the disabled and for reducing disability to management and treatment.
The letter to the National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions (NCAHP) pointed out that restrictions on admission to physiotherapy courses for persons with disability are even more restrictive than those for MBBS, MD and MS.
The use of outdated, derogatory terms such as ‘handicapped’, ‘retardation’, and ‘mentally subnormal’ is deeply troubling and legally indefensible, stated the letter, adding that reliance is placed on the older 1995 Disabilities Act in a couple of places in the curriculum, though the older Act has been replaced by the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPDA), 2016.
The Bachelor of Physiotherapy curriculum fails to incorporate disability as a human rights issue and instead relies solely on the medical model, reducing disability to management and treatment, and omits core principles such as ableism, dignity, universal design and reasonable accommodation, stated the letter.
The admission guidelines deem those with more than 50 per cent impairment of lower limbs, involvement of the non-dominant upper limb, more than 50 per cent spinal involvement and more than 50 per cent impairment due to dyslexia, blood disorders, or chronic neurological conditions as ineligible to do graduation in physiotherapy.
“The new curriculum reduces humanistic learning to optional “soft skills”, ignoring global trends and Indian initiatives that emphasize the centrality of humanities in health professions education….
The current reference materials are also outdated (e.g., citing a 2000 RCI publication over the 2022 WHO Global Report on Health Equity for Persons with Disabilities), which further distances the curriculum from present-day realities,” pointed out the letter. It sought at least a 30-day window for public consultation, as is the norm, instead of just 15 days.
Doctors With Disabilities urged the commission to integrate disability rights-based competencies aligned with RPDA 2016 and WHO standards and to revoke discriminatory admission guidelines.
The network offered to collaborate with the commission to make “essential revisions” that would help “future physiotherapists and allied health professionals deliver care that is compassionate, inclusive, and grounded in the values of justice and dignity”.
