Health

Increase the number of medical and para-medical colleges to make India self-sufficient in human resources

Inadequate Progress

The WHO prescribes an ideal doctor-population ratio at 1:1000 i.e. 1 doctor for a population of 1000. 

According to Medical Council of India, there are currently 10.41 lakh allopathic doctors in India. Assuming 80% availability, 8.32 lakh doctors who would be available for active service. This leaves India short of 6.9 lakh doctors and gives doctor-population ratio of 0.62:1000.

There were 404 colleges offering 54079 MBBS seats in 2014-15 of which 25,624 was in government colleges. Although over the past 4 years there was a increase in number of seats, the Health ministry banned 12 government and 70 medical colleges from accepting students, thereby reducing the total MBBS seats by 10,000. Currently, there are 492 colleges with 61,880 seats available an increase of  14% during the tenure.

Clearly, BJP government has done too little to make India self-sufficient in terms of its requirement of doctors.

However no such data is available for para medical colleges, as there is no regulatory body for paramedical courses in India. This issue needs immediate government attention, as a regulatory body is the fundamental condition to ensure self-sufficiency in human resources. Till date, no such regulatory body exists.

In the absence of government, not even maintaining this data, it is unclear how government would have gone about planning to make India self-sufficient.

As of March 2017, India had a shortfall of 10,112 female health workers at PHCs, 11,712 female health assistants15,592 male health assistants and more than 6,100 female health workers and auxiliary nurse midwives at SCs.

This is not taking into account the thousands of additional paramedical staff that is required even after all shortfall is filled

Over all, the performance of the Government for this promise is inadequate.

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1 Comment

  1. Rafiq Teli

    64000 seats are more than our requirement. I fear there will be unemployment among the medical graduates in near future. Education quality at medical colleges may be deteriorated.