Indian Journal of Clinical Anatomy and Physiology 2023;10(1):1–2 Content available at: https://www.ipinnovative.com/open-access-journals Indian Journal of Clinical Anatomy and Physiology Journal homepage: https://www.ijcap.org/ Editorial MBBS in a multilingual world: An age-old concept with new beginning Anu Sharma 1, *, Ajay Kumar 1 , Achintya Tyagi 2 , Arnav Mokta 3 1 Dept. of Anatomy, Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana, Punjab, India 2 Baba Sahib Ambedkar Medical College, New Delhi, India 3 Dr. Y S Parmar Medical College, Nahan, Himachal Pradesh, India ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 12-04-2023 Accepted 16-04-2023 Available online 19-04-2023 This is an Open Access (OA) journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. For reprints contact: reprint@ipinnovative.com The educationists all around the world have felt the need for multilingual curricula in a diverse and multilingual society. It is much-needed in the field of medical education with an advent of globalization of medicine. The World Federation for medical education in Edinburgh declaration (1988) emphasized the need of survey for the role of different languages in medical schools. 1 Medical students coming from various cultural and language backgrounds generally face learning problems in this situation. A holistic effort is required to bring linguistic and cultural sensitivity in the medical education system. At the same time irrational approach is to be avoided. There is a need for inventing ways to deal with the cultural diversities and social background of learner and modifying the principles of a medical education system. These principles should address commitment to adopt various languages as a medium for education. To overcome the problem of different languages medical colleges are adopting English as a medium for teaching. However, in many countries knowledge of native languages is also a part of curricula in medical education. 2 There is a necessity for linguistic program development in medical field. Knowledge of new languages may help improving the social understanding of relevant ideas. Students working in a medical field will be encouraged to communicate and interact in native language. Medical * Corresponding author. E-mail address: anuashwani@gmail.com (A. Sharma). education must lead in breaking language barriers. 3 Recently in India the Ministry of education with the help of National medical council offered a course in Hindi language. The reason behind the initiative is that majority of patients do not know how to speak and write English. A large section of the Indian students study in their mother tongue, and all of a sudden, when they start medical education in English medium they find it difficult to comprehend medical language. Students from rural areas who are unable to get medical education because of lack of knowledge of English will not lag behind and will be able to pursue the MBBS course in Hindi language with this kind of initiative. Indian state, Madhya Pradesh has announced to take an initiative for rolling out textbooks in Hindi for medical students. It is made clear by the education ministry that MBBS will soon be taught in the country in regional languages (Tamil, Telgu etc.). There is a plan for three basic 1st year MBBS subjects (anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry) to be taught in Hindi medium in all the government medical colleges of Madhya Pradesh. The classroom, students, and lecturers would remain the same, and only those students who face difficulty in understanding lectures and books in English would have the facility to understand the subject in their own language. Three books of main subjects in MBBS first year have been translated, by using the same terminology used in English language. It has been stated that Dr MGR Medical University’s former vice https://doi.org/10.18231/j.ijcap.2023.001 2394-2118/© 2023 Innovative Publication, All rights reserved. 1