Disability rights advocates are angry over the Nursing Council of India’s (NCI) recent proposed clause to restrict admissions of candidates with disabilities.
The proposal would limit 5 per cent seats for persons with disabilities — but only for students with a lower-limb disability and for those with 40-50 disability, reported the Daily Pioneer.
Calling the NCI’s proposal “discriminatory” and “unfair,” health professionals and advocates have sent a letter to the Union Health Ministry and the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities under Union Social Justice Ministry, with two demands: the clause to be revoked, and that nurses with disabilities and disability rights organizations be included in the creation of any new guidelines.
Ironically, advocates say that the INC developed the “revised Nursing Curriculum in the year we commemorated the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth, and despite the passage of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPDA) in 2016.”
