Director General of Health Services, Prof Jagdish Prasad today said the Central government, in consultation with the Medical Council of India (MCI), was taking steps to revise the syllabus of the MBBS course.

He said the step is being taken to ensure that the MBBS students do not require to study in great detail many aspects of medical science in which they would specialise subsequently."The new syllabus may be ready in another one and half years," Prasad told reporters after addressing a public lecture on 'National Health Programmes' at the SOA University."What is the need to teach a student at MBBS level 10 different surgeries when all they need is to acquire a good knowledge as to how to treat common diseases," he said and urged students to take great care in studying the subjects of anatomy, physiology and pathology for a strong foundation.

While interacting with doctors and faculty members, Prof Prasad said the issue of antibiotic resistance was a raging topic world over and the government had requested MCI to make it mandatory for every medical college to have a pharmaco vigilance committee to monitor use of antibiotics."Antibiotic resistance is worse than cancer as it cannot be treated and will kill," he said.On certain diseases, Prasad said though leprosy eradication had been largely successful in most states, the problem persisted in the states of Odisha, Chhatisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand besides the Union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli."The government has launched a door to door campaign to identify leprosy cases and 40,000 cases had been detected after health workers had visited 40 crore houses in these identified areas," he said while delivering the lecture.

"In Odisha, 5100 new cases had been identified," he said.Prasad said Odisha, along with Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand and Meghalaya, accounted for 80 per cent of malaria cases even as the government had drawn up a plan to eliminate the vector-borne disease in the country by 2025."Odisha accounts for 40 per cent of the malaria cases and we aim to reduce the incidence in the country by one-third this year," he said.Pointing out that diabetes, hypertension, stroke, chronic obstructive lung disease and cancer were the five non-communicable ailments that accounted for around 60 per cent of deaths in the world, Prasad said most of these diseases could be kept at arm s length only through healthy habits and lifestyle."Regular exercise, yoga and abstinence from smoking and alcohol could help a person to avoid such non-communicable diseases," he said.