At the meeting, at Lindford Village Hall on October 11, group members heard about Healthspring - the development of a primary-care health system in India, which was started in Mumbai but is slowly spreading throughout the country.
The meeting heard Healthspring had now expanded into Pune, a new-build city adjacent to Mumbai, and Delhi, with more surgeries planned for Hyderabad, Bangalore, Calcutta and Chennai.
The Badgerswood and Forest surgeries have been helping to develop standards of medical training, including the creation of a formal training and assessment system for the doctors in India.
The meeting was chaired by Dave Lee, chairman of the Patients Participation Group, and the secretary was Headley parish councillor Yvonne Parker-Smith. Dr Helen Sherrell, of the Badgerswood Surgery, was also present.
The doctors are finding that more colleagues in the UK are expressing an eagerness to help with Healthspring.
Indian doctors have gaps in their medical knowledge and are working in groups covering for each other’s deficiencies, the meeting heard.
A distance-learning programme has been developed, which will include the full curriculum for a trainee GP in India.
Healthspring Indian doctors also need help with how to communicate with patients and how to examine properly, which can be taught partly by video instruction but will need regular visits India to instruct.
Mrs Parker-Smith added: “Healthspring can teach the doctors to a high standard with all the materials necessary.
“But to ensure that the doctors study and learn, we also need to test them, so an examination system is being set up that is based on continual multiple-choice questions linked to the distance-learning programme and by direct testing when we will be visiting.”
Dr Farhan Mallick, from the Forest Surgery in Bordon’s Forest Road, who was unable to attend the meeting, has stated there was a desire in India to develop a formal training system in primary care similar to that in the UK.
It is hoped that Healthspring will establish basic training in speciality subjects in hospitals, followed by a formal training programme in primary care.
The surgeries have been in touch with the chancellor of the university hospital of West Bengal with a view to developing this formal training programme there initially.
The Bordon and Headley surgeries are are looking to assist India in developing an Indian college of general practitioners.
The project is in the early stages but the plan is to charge patients £100 a year to attend the surgeries in India. Later how the service can be extended to the more deprived areas of the country will be looked at.
Mr Lee, a retired surgeon, talked of his visit to India and of his meeting with the doctors there, at which the Healthspring project was discussed.
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