Uzbekistan has grown quickly as an MBBS destination for Indian students, and the pitch is familiar: low fees, English-medium teaching, no entrance exam beyond NEET, and a short flight.
There is something you need to know before you read any of that, and it is recent.
NMC issued an alert on Uzbekistan in April 2026
On 1 April 2026, the National Medical Commission's Under-Graduate Medical Education Board issued an alert note for Indian students seeking undergraduate medical admission in Uzbekistan. It named four institutions:
- Bukhara State Medical Institute
- Samarkand State Medical University
- Tashkent State Medical University
- TIT Institute of Medical Sciences, Bangalore — an offshore campus of TSMU's Termez branch
The matter reached NMC through the Indian Embassy in Tashkent. The concerns reported were enrolment beyond the institute's intake capacity, a lack of hands-on clinical training because the medium of instruction is not English, violations of NMC regulations, and alleged malpractice by admission agents.
NMC asked Indian citizens and OCI holders considering Uzbekistan — and, in its words, similar destinations — to be extremely cautious and to satisfy themselves that the institution complies with the FMGL Regulations, 2021.
It is an advisory, not a ban
This got reported on social media as a ban, and it is not one. The Embassy of India in Tashkent clarified that the advisory is precautionary and does not amount to a ban on the universities concerned. The Haryana Medical Council said the same of its own advisory naming the three Uzbek institutions — that it should not be read as an admission ban.
So the accurate position is this: admissions are not prohibited, and NMC has formally told you to be careful and to check compliance yourself. Those are two different statements and both are true at once.
What it means practically is that the burden of proof has moved onto you. If you are considering one of the named institutions, the questions below are not optional diligence — they are the specific points the regulator raised.
The question the alert actually turns on
Look again at the second concern: the medium of instruction is not English.
That is not a comfort issue. It is one of the conditions for your degree to count in India. The FMGL Regulations, 2021 require a foreign medical degree where the medium of instruction was English. A course advertised to Indian students in English, where the clinical training actually happens in Uzbek or Russian because that is what the patients speak, is the exact scenario the alert describes.
And it is the hardest thing to verify from a brochure, because the brochure is in English.
Ask directly, and ask about the clinical years specifically rather than the course as a whole:
- In which language are ward rounds and clinical rotations conducted?
- In which language do you take patient histories?
- Is local-language training provided, and is it compulsory?
- Will the university state the medium of instruction in writing, for the whole course?
If the answer to the last one is anything other than a document, treat that as the answer.
The rest of the FMGL checklist
Language is the one the alert highlights, but it is one of several. Your course must also satisfy:
- A duration of at least 54 months
- An internship of at least 12 months at the same institution that awards the degree
- No part of the training done in India or in a third country
- Completion within ten years of joining
That third line is worth pausing on given the fourth institution named in the alert is an offshore campus in Bangalore. A medical course delivered to Indian students inside India, awarding a foreign degree, sits squarely against the requirement that no part of the training happens in India. Anyone offering you that arrangement should be asked to explain, in writing, how it satisfies FMGL.
Our full breakdown of the regulations is in what NMC requires of an MBBS abroad.
On the fees
Uzbekistan is marketed on price, and the figures you see quoted vary enormously between agents for what is supposedly the same course at the same university. There is a reason NMC's own guidance tells students to obtain fee and course details directly from the university.
We follow that here. We are not going to publish a fee table assembled from consultancy websites and present it as the cost of your degree. Get the figure from the university, in writing, for the full course rather than year one.
And when you compare, compare the whole path: five and a half years of living costs, the 12-month CRMI in India afterwards, and the FMGE attempts. A cheap course that cannot clear FMGL is not cheap.
If you are already enrolled
The alert is about new admissions, and it is not a ban, so it does not by itself invalidate anyone's enrolment. If you are already studying at one of the named institutions, the useful thing is to establish where you stand against each FMGL condition now rather than in your final year — particularly the medium of instruction and the internship arrangement.
If you want that checked against your actual enrolment documents, bring them to us. Our counselling is free, and it is free whether or not you ever become a client.
The alert details above are from NMC's UGMEB alert note dated 1 April 2026 and the subsequent clarifications from the Embassy of India in Tashkent and the Haryana Medical Council, as reported in October 2026. NMC revises this area frequently — confirm the current position on nmc.org.in before acting on it.