Social Accountability of Medical Colleges in India

‘Social Accountability' is a very important aspect of health human power resource development. Social accountability for medical colleges has been defined as “the obligation to direct their education, research and service activities towards addressing the priority health concern of the community, region and/or nation they have a mandate to serve”. The priority health concerns are to be identified jointly by governments, health care organizations, health professionals and the public. The values of social accountability stressed are relevance, quality, cost effectiveness and equity. While the above definition is a good generic one, in the Indian situation and perhaps the South Asian situation, the focus on ‘social justice' should be on the poor and the marginalized. The needs of the disadvantaged would have to be emphasized and the mechanism of the involvement of the community in defining priorities would have to be considered. In addition, since the medical colleges are affiliated to universities and regulated by a medical council and are not autonomous, the definition of social accountability would have to derive from the vision/ objectives/ recommendations on medical education of the medical council and university as well and not from the goals set by the colleges themselves. A study of Medical Colleges in India on this theme would be both relevant and significant.