Allied Healthcare (GAHC)

St Xavier's University in Kolkata is soon going to start a School of Nursing and a medical college, a senior official with the university has stated.

Vice Chancellor Father Felix Raj added they will begin with School of Nursing.

"We will try to acquire a piece of land from the government for this project. Whether it is a nursing college or a medical college, you will have to have healthcare facilities and infrastructure. Or a tie-up with a hospital," he added on Tuesday.

Two years ago, a 10-acre piece of land had been demanded by the university from the state government for an expansion project of the university, which is yet to be accomplished, he added.

"The 7th Convocation Ceremony will be conducted on the 21st of February, 2026, at the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre in New Town," announced Raj.

Rev. Dr. Arturo Sosa, SJ., Superior General of the Jesuits based in Rome, Italy, has graciously consented to honor this event with his presence as our chief guest. The Governor of West Bengal, a visitor to our university, Shri C V Ananda Bose, is expected to preside over this function with Rev," he added.

"The university has gone through a complete revamp since 2017 in terms of both infrstructure and academics," added another VC, "And they have already invested Rs 550 crore in thisprocess."

"The last five years have really changed everything for Christ University

"The second academic building is nearly complete and will provide facility for modern class rooms and laboratories, libraries, moot court, etc. The proposed auditorium will have a seating capacity for 2,000 people, while two other auditoriums will have a seating capacity for 600 and 300 people, respectively," he added.

To make students take part in game and sport activities, the university is also considering constructing two swimming pools.

St. Xavier's University will start B Tech from 2026, and MTech will be added in due course of time, he added. "The university will start a variety of programs including integrated MBA, integrated B. Ed, School of Design," other than School of Nursing and a medical college, he added.

Located in Goa is the peaceful island of Santo Estêvão, or St Estevam famous for its okra. The people affectionately referred to it as Juvem, but because of its legendary produce, it had another name—the ‘isle of vegetables’: Shakecho Juvo, famous for ‘long pale-green seven-ridged ladyfingers.’

“This dream of ours was quite eccentric at that time, and a very ambitious dream to have,” remembers Dr. Luis Dias, Miguel’s great-grandson. With a nascent Medical School in Goa, Miguel’s ambitions forced him to leave Portuguese-occupied Goa in order to study in either Bombay or Lisbon. But all this cost money—and money is exactly what the Dias family did not have.

"Many sacrifices had to be made for my great-grandfather to travel to Lisbon to study. The payment for all this was a watermelon offered by all his family when he returned because they were so poor," says Dr. Luis.

Goa's First Native ‘General’

With assistance from his brother João Vicente Santana Dias, Miguel went on to join the Faculty of Medicine at University of Lisbon, where he emerged with excellence in 1882. However, this excellence was achieved through a struggle since Miguel could not afford textbooks, most of which were in French, a language he had to study first before copying all the textbook knowledge in medical books by hand, which is a family asset to this day in the Dias family, despite being on different sides of the earth.

After excelling in education, Miguel got stationed in Mozambique, where primitive medical facilities compelled him to conduct life-saving surgeries with very basic tools. In 1888, he returned to Goa, which was far behind British India in terms of medical facilities. He took up the position of Director of Health Services and received the military designation ‘General’ – this being the highest title in the Portuguese medical service, with Miguel being the first and only Goan to have achieved this feat.

The Man Who Helped Save Humanity from the Plague

As an advisor to and director of a medical school, Dr. Miguel gained respect not only as a physician but as a surgeon. He conducted many first-of-its-kind surgeries, such as the first appendectomy in the state without using antibiotics, anesthetics, or aseptic methods. "This is right before antibiotics, so if you opened up this area, you have a higher chance of getting an infection," says Dr. Luis.

His most exemplary performance was during the Bubonic Plague in 1908. Through intensive sanitation drives, advanced medical programs, and an intolerance of social class divisions in treatment, he radically transformed the face of public health in Goa. His groundbreaking work earned him honorific Portuguese awards such as the highly esteemed Cavaleiro, Official e Comendador da Real Ordem Militar de S. Bento de Aviz.

Dr. Miguel was equally important in halting the shut-down of the Medical School of Goa because of a scathing inspection report in 1897. Where official records attribute this honor to Miguel Bombarda, historical records suggest that he is actually the first to have put forth arguments in:

“The Medical Surgical School of Nova Goa… collaborates in satisfying requirements of African colonization at a minimal cost to the treasury… this school has proved not only advantageous in Portuguese India but to the other colonies as well…”

Although he lived in a time of social division, Dr. Miguel, a Christian of humble background, made a name through merit alone. He advocated European vaccination practices despite native beliefs that vaccinations were a way of polluting one’s body.

"A Goiano jornalista e militante do anti colonialismo, o jornalista Luiz de Menezes Bragança, assim o definiu: ‘Foi um grande “He remained always the same – simple, ingenuous, unaffected before the great and small…” Dr. Luis gives other examples from his own family: when Miguel talked at a felicitation function not of himself but of his father; or when he stood up for a vegetable vendor being harassed, shouting from his balcony, "I am a bhendekar too, come to me first." 

As a final desire of this great man, when Dr. Miguel departed this life on 26th July 1936, he was buried not in Panjim, where he had established such a successful career, but in the very village he loved so much. Even today, a statue erected in commemoration of this dedicated man remains in Panjim, complete with medals representing the eradication of the plague and a complete overhaul of the medical system in Goa, all thanks to this man.

Hong Kong is stepping up research into traditional Chinese medicine as part of China's efforts to enhance the scientific foundation and increase the application of age-old herbal remedies, by leveraging artificial intelligence to analyse data on traditional treatments used informally throughout East and Southeast Asia.

The School of Chinese Medicine at Hong Kong Baptist University is presently the leader within this region in conducting research into old remedies.

"We have a very active programme in drug discovery. A lot of these [Chinese medicines] are based on botanical drugs originally suggested by doctors a thousand years ago," Martin Wong, provost of Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), told University World News.

“The Hong Kong and Chinese governments want Hong Kong to experiment and come up with a new model of how to have Western medicine and Chinese medicine combined,” he said.

HKBU's long-established School of Chinese Medicine was the first Hong Kong government-funded institution to offer undergraduate programs in Chinese medicine and pharmacy. According to Wong, these combine elements of Western medicine as well.

This month, the Hong Kong government announced that the city's first Chinese Medicine Hospital - currently under construction - will open this December. HKBU has been a key advisor for the government-funded hospital, which it will manage.

Setting up Hong Kong as a centre for Chinese medicine and integrating Chinese and Western medicine will also accelerate the research in traditional medicines and possibly allow clinical trails, said experts.

Collaboration agreements were signed on 9 September with HKBU and Hong Kong's two medical schools, at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) - both globally renowned for their biomedical research. Experts at the three universities will support the new hospital's clinical services, extending the use of Chinese medicines beyond primary healthcare. They will also conduct research at the hospitals.

Research on Chinese herbal remedies

HKBU is using modern data science and AI to research herbal medicines with a view to developing new drugs aimed at the global market as well as modernizing Chinese medicine, said Wong. AI is also used to analyze chemical compounds in plants.

Lyu Aiping, vice-president (Research and Development) at HKBU and a member of its Chinese medicine faculty, told University World News: "We envision a future where data science and AI illuminate what Chinese medicine research has long intimated, providing deeper insights into health classifications and compound interventions."

Wong said, "At HKBU we start with a lot of clinical data based on historical [materials] about what doctors prescribed for patients with certain medical problems and what these plants are good for. Once we have that, we want to develop some drugs based on the clinical data."

We use very sophisticated analyses using AI and find out a lot of potential drug candidates. Once you have these, you go into the next stage of modern biochemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, to see where these are viable and safe.

Wong said the aim was to apply to file drug patents based on traditional Chinese medicines. A few drugs developed at HKBU have been given FDA approval for clinical trials, he pointed out.

One of these has already been granted "orphan drug" status by the FDA for the treatment of myofibrillar myopathy, a rare neuromuscular disease caused mainly by genetic mutations.

According to a report titled Evolving Legacy: Decoding the scientific trajectory of Chinese medicine released in June by HKBU and Elsevier, the first bibliometric analysis of Chinese medicine covering the past decade, research papers on Chinese medicine nearly tripled between 2014 and 2023.

The report found that Chinese medicine researchers are producing high-impact work mainly in the mainland of China, underlined growing interdisciplinary collaboration, and an uptick in international partnerships with other countries.

Western vs Chinese approaches

He explained that the approaches utilized in Western drug development were different from those of Chinese medicine; Chinese medicine would stress combination therapies, a "whole body" approach to symptoms of disease, and social and environmental factors.

Western drugs, he noted, isolate medical diseases by diagnosis with no linkage between diseases, but with Chinese medicine “we can find some connection between two different diseases that would modify current interventions [treatments]”.

He employs a "systems medicine" approach, which focuses on complex disease interaction and is not just limited to a single disease treatment. This is in recognition that diseases like diabetes and hypertension interact dynamically in the human body.

The Western process isolates single compounds, takes the active ingredient, and incorporates it into the drug for a diagnosis without linkage between diseases, while Chinese medicine combines herbs that commonly have multiple compounds that work in harmony, Lyu said.

"The future of medicine," he said, "is to understand these complex interactions and move beyond the traditional single-compound drug discovery model.

He believes that up to two or three compounds in combination can improve treatment efficacy. “Chinese medicine can actually show us how future medicine could get done,” he said, with much enthusiasm.

"Robust clinical evidence is critical to acceptance, however," he said.

"Clinical trials have become more and more important to prove efficacy," Lyu said, noting: "Worldwide, more and more clinical trials on Chinese herbal products have been published.

"In all the clinical trials I conduct, I collect more samples and, with the help of AI, try to analyze the difference in responsiveness and then try to find out the reason for those non-responsive cases."

"So rather than pure clinical trials on efficacy > [this approach] would add a stage of clinical trial plus clinical pharmacology."

Dual fluency HKBU's degrees in Chinese medicine are especially popular with Mainland students, although only one in six applicants from outside Hong Kong are admitted to the HKBU programmes, according to Wong. The school also offers a Masters in Chinese Medicine Drug Discovery. Lyu believes the next generation of Chinese medicine professionals would need "deep, dual fluency – not only in traditional Chinese medicine, but also in contemporary biomedical sciences." 

This can be termed as a major boost to the medical education system of India and the overall healthcare capacity, as the National Medical Commission has permitted opening 118 new medical colleges across the country in the last two academic years.

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The Union Health Ministry informed Rajya Sabha during the Winter Session of Parliament that for the academic year 2024–25, approvals were accorded to 74 medical colleges, and for 2025–26, 44 such permissions were granted, placing Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan as the top beneficiary states. This exponential growth is part of the government's long-term plan to bridge the gap in supply against growing demand for doctors.

The doctor–population ratio in India is 1:811, considering 80 percent availability of registered practitioners, said Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda. With 13,88,185 registered allopathic doctors and 7,51,768 AYUSH practitioners in the country, there is a perceptible progress towards having more health workers. Medical education has seen an unprecedented transformation by way of the number of colleges increasing from 387 to 818, MBBS seats from 51,348 to 1,28,875, and postgraduate seats from 31,185 to 82,059 since 2014.

The Union Cabinet has also cleared Phase-III of the Centrally Sponsored Scheme for adding 5,000 new PG medical seats, in addition to 5,023 additional MBBS seats through upgrading of government medical colleges and standalone PG institutes from 2025–26 to 2028–29, further boosting specialist training. It is also expected to ensure increased access to medical education, ease the severe shortage of specialist doctors, and boost overall healthcare infrastructure, especially in the country's underserved and rural areas. With such aggressive expansions, India gears up for future healthcare demands and inches closer to global standards with regard to doctor-patient availability and capacity in medical education.

This provides not only an important qualification but also quite an indispensable one in a sensitive and highly regulated field of counseling. In turn, many students enter into the first formal step toward professional licensure by pursuing a Master's in Counseling, fully dedicating themselves to the betterment of mental well-being, guiding personal growth, and supporting others through life's most challenging transitions.

Throughout this program, the Master's in Counseling curriculum will place an emphasis on how to incorporate current advanced theoretical principles into established clinical skills in order to prepare you as an effective and ethical practitioner with your clients, whether your goals involve being a mental health counselor, a school counselor, a career advisor, a rehabilitation counselor, or a behavioral health specialist. Graduates will be prepared to provide structured, evidence-based support to people experiencing emotional distress, mental illness, trauma, disability, loss, or major life change.

As you start researching all the different universities offering this degree, it is little wonder that you might get overwhelmed with all the variety in requirements, specializations available, and resultant career paths. A simplified breakdown of what you might expect follows.

Admission Requirements

Students come into the counseling program from a wide range of undergraduate and professional backgrounds. While a bachelor's degree from an accredited institution is required, it does not have to be in any particular field, such as psychology. Most universities accept students from any undergraduate major; some universities may prefer a background in psychology or social sciences.

Relevant voluntary or professional experience that might support an application could include working with community organisations, schools, helplines, or mental health centres.

Common requirements include:

• Academic transcripts; a minimum 3.0 GPA is often required
• A personal statement or statement of purpose
• A professional resume or CV
• Letters of recommendation
• Short written responses to programme-specific questions
• Some require the GRE, while several have done away with standardized testing altogether.
• Popular Specialisations

Specialized tracks within accredited counseling programs are usually offered in the following:

• Addiction Counseling
• Career Counseling
• Clinical Mental Health Counseling
• Rehabilitation Counseling

School and Educational Counseling College Counseling and Student Affairs Many programs offer additional specializations such as family counseling, trauma-informed therapy, social justice counseling, gerontology, nature-based therapy, and spirituality-informed counseling. 

What Will You Study? 

A master's in counseling is designed to take both theory and practice into account. Students gain an advanced insight into subjects regarding human behavior, psychological development, the techniques of assessment, and various ethical issues in counseling. Core subjects may include but are not limited to the following: Counseling theories and techniques Human growth and development Psychological assessment Multicultural- and diversity-centered counseling Group counseling methods Research and data analysis in counseling Other common areas of focus are trauma care, substance abuse, career development, family therapy, and psychopathology. As well as classroom study, all programs include supervised practicum and internships, giving students field experiences before going into professional life. 

Within the United States and in international contexts recognizing US standards, the most prominent accrediting body is CACREP: the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs. The CACREP-accredited programmes meet strict academic and professional standards, and are recognized by licensing authorities, government employers, and professional bodies. Accredited programs usually require: Minimum 60 semester credits Practicum: 100 hours; internship: 600 hours. 

While CACREP is by far the best-known accrediting agency, some institutions are accredited by MPCAC, which focuses on interdisciplinary and culturally responsive programs in counseling. Graduating from an accredited institution definitely creates an advantage in licensure and professional certification, as well as in government and hospital-based openings. Much more than an academic qualification, a Master's in Counseling prepares one professionally for a lifetime role - as healer, guide, and support system - within society, offering a stable, respected, deeply fulfilling career path to individuals who are empathetic, patient, and motivated toward changing lives.

According to the reports, Baraiya, who weighs less than 20 kg and has 72% locomotion disability due to dwarfism, was declared ineligible for admission to the MBBS course in 2018 by MCI. The Council had said that his condition would not allow him to carry out the duties of a doctor.

From High Court Rejection to Supreme Court Victory

He continued his battle to the Supreme Court. Four months later, the SC ordered in his favour, saying that height could not be a reason for denying medical education.

Completing MBBS Against All Odds

Baraiya, after the judgment, received an admission letter to Bhavnagar Medical College in 2019. The journey of medical college was not at all easy for him; his small stature made it inconvenient for him to do daily academic work straightforwardly. He was given access to the front row during anatomy dissections, and his fellow students even carried him during surgical postings so he could observe the operations.

Serving as a Doctor, Supporting His Family After doing his internship, Baraiya has now become a doctor, fulfilling the ambition he fought for years to protect. The first thing he is going to do with his earnings is to complete the construction of a proper house for his family who still lives in a kaccha house. “My dream is to give them a solid brick house with basic amenities,” as reported by The Times of India.