Kolkata: Keeping up with the rising demand for medical professionals in India, Singapore-based medical placement company Health Care Management International (HCMI) Saturday launched a programme here for eastern India.

"In view of the huge demand of high-quality medical professionals, we have already started our programme in Chennai, Ahmedabad and Delhi. Now we are exploring eastern India," said HCMI managing director Baljit Singh here.

Headquartered in Singapore, HCMI has already launched a curriculum across major Philippines universities for the MBBS degree.

He said the HCMI education division would provide MBBS degrees to Indian medical students from various Philippines universities accredited under the Commission of Higher Education, Government of Philippines.

Many Philippines universities, such as the University of Northern Philippines, Davao Medical School Foundation, Cagayan State University and Emilio Aguinaldo College are included in the HCMI MBBS programme.

"The course fee for (the) MMBS programme would be between $20,000 and 28,000 and the duration would be four and a half years and one year of internship," Singh said, adding that the admission procedure will be according to the Medical Council of India (MCI) guidelines.

"We have also started a national-level admission test, as a pilot project, in Jharkhand this year. From next year the examination will be held across the country for the next session," he said.