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India Lacks Doctor-People Ratio
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 28 September 2011, 00:00 IST |
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Bangalore: It is estimated that India will take at least 17 more years before it can reach the World Health Organization's (WHO) recommended norm of one doctor per 1,000 people, reports Kounteya Sinha from TNN.
Planning Commission's high-level expert group (HLEG) on universal health coverage (UHC) has predicted the availability of one allopathic doctor per 1,000 people by 2028. It has suggested setting up 187 medical colleges in 17 high focus states during the 12th and 13th five year Plan to achieve the target.
According to the estimates of HLEG, the number of allopathic doctors registered with the Medical Council of India (MCI) has increased since 1974 to 6.12 lakhs in 2011, a ratio of one doctor for 1,953 people or a density of 0.5 doctors per 1,000 people.
HLEG has proposed a phased addition of 187 colleges. By 2015 under phase A, 59 new medical colleges will admit students in 15 states like Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
By 2017, 13 of these states will have an additional 70 medical colleges, and by 2022, another 58 institutes will be built in two additional phases (2017-2020 and 2020-2022). And by 2022, India will witness one medical college per 25 lakh population in all states except Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
The implementation of its recommendations will enable the additional availability of 1.2 lakh doctors by 2017, and 1.9 lakh doctors between 2017 and 2022.
Along with the establishment of new medical colleges, the admission capacities of existing colleges in the public sector should also be increased. Partnerships with the private sector should be encouraged, with conditional reservation of 50 percent of seats for local candidates, fixed admission fees and government reimbursement of fees for local candidates. The revised MBBS curriculum proposed by the MCI should be refined to put greater focus on preventive, promotive and rehabilitative healthcare.