Bridging the Gap between Community and

VOL. 2, No. 1 Cardiovascular diseases are an emerging cause of morbidity and mortality in India. India produces less than 150 cardiologists annually, leading to a gap between the need and availability of trained professionals. A three-year cardiology-training programme is available for post-graduate doctors in the conventional medical education system. The majority of the people living in rural areas, small towns, and district towns in the country do not have any access to cardiac care, because trained cardiologists are mostly concentrated in the metropolitan are or capital cities. To address this issue Indira Gandhi National Open University has designed and developed a two-year, full-time training programme in the area of non-invasive cardiology for medical graduates, named the Post Graduate Diploma in Clinical Cardiology, which is being offered through the open and distance learning mode. The objective of the programme is to train a large number of medical graduates effectively to enable early recognition, management and prevention of common cardiovascular diseases. Learners have been given the opportunity to train in different departments and are posted in various areas in this programme, such as management of common cardiovascular diseases (6 months), ECG and Stres