The Chiropractic Diplomatic Corps’ (CDC) interest in the international development of the chiropractic profession began in 1997. This started with an initial effort to interest American and Canadian doctors to rotate into clinics in the Caribbean and Latin America to increase the availability of chiropractic services. But in 1998, after attending the World Federation of Chiropractors 1st Conference on Chiropractic Education in Manila, Philippines, we became aware of the extreme challenges to establish Chiropractic programs abroad, that is outside of western speaking countries, which came into focus. After years of studying the very slow global development of the Chiropractic profession it became more and more obvious that before any nation could establish and sustainability grow the profession, it must have a Chiropractic education program of its own.

 

The Education priority started from a 2004 World Health Organization referral to an NGO in Bangalore, India. More details are outlined in our report of that period in this ARTICLE. An initial proposal was made to the Karnataka government to establish a Chiropractic Fellowship for post MBBA certification. Parallel to that was an attempt to obtain approval from the federal government of a full Doctor of chiropractic diploma course. Unfortunately neither program was able to be implemented at that time.

 

The relationships with several Bangalore NGOs grew over the years that followed. It wasn’t until progress that the CDC had made in the Philippines that the program composing the curriculum and technology of education was formulated, and is now available for Indian universities.

 

With accreditation being sought from the Philippine Commission on Higher Education through a Manila University, India now moves forward to accredit the first diploma program of chiropractic education, starting with a BSc special chiropractic track, matriculating the graduate into the Masters on Chiropractic, which is a prerequisite for the Chiropractic Fellowship course.

 

A successful launching of the Philippine’s Bachelor, Masters and PhD course in Chiropractic opens the opportunity to send the future faculty for India to train and receive their Doctorate in Chiropractic in Manila to return and teach in the Indian universities.