Fertile ground for Indian doctors

Walking through the wards to ensure that patients are well has been a daily routine for Siva Vrajeth Rebba from India’s Hyderabad for several months.

Rebba, 28, is a second-year postgraduate of Guangxi Medical University and is now working as an intern in a hospital attached to the university in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Because of his interest in Chinese culture and medicine, Rebba came to China in 2011.

“I hope to become a doctor. Compared with studying in Western countries, the tuition and accommodation fees of universities in China are much cheaper and I also got a scholarship,” said Rebba.

The scholarship is funded by the Chinese government. A total of 63,000 international students were funded by Chinese government scholarships in 2018, accounting for 12.8 percent of the total foreign students in China, according to China’s Ministry of Education.

Rebba chose surgery as his major to start his six years of undergraduate study and his choice has proved to be a good one.

“The university in Guangxi has provided me high-quality teaching resources,” said Rebba, who enjoys high-end facilities as well as abundant opportunities for practice.

After learning Chinese for a year, Rebba can talk with patients fluently in Chinese and earns around 3,500 yuan (US$495) a month as an intern.

Once a week, Rebba gives a medical lecture to junior students from India.

Rebba is among 330 Indian students in the Guangxi Medical University, which has enrolled thousands of Indian students since 2006.

Over 500 Indian students are now studying in Guangxi, most of them majoring in medicine, according to the local education department. They can legally practice medicine in India bypassing the Foreign Medical Graduates Examination organized by India’s National Board of Examinations.

“What I have learned in China is enough to pass the exam,” Rebba said, adding that learning medicine in China has become a trend in India.

Nishant from New Delhi who is studying clinical medicine in Ningxia Medical University in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region has an experience similar to Rebba’s. Nishant said doctors have high social status in India, so a lot of young people in India dream to become doctors. However, the public medical schools in India offer limited places for applicants each year.

“I have more opportunities in China and the education quality is high here,” said Nishant.

With the growing number of Indian students coming to China, Indian restaurants and yoga studios have developed rapidly in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Nanning and Kunming, ensuring the students have some home comforts.