Every district will have a medical college within next five years
In order to bring down the shortage of doctors and improve
healthcare services at the minutest level, the government is planning to have medical
colleges in each district. It has plans to convert district hospitals
into training institute the paramedical personnel as well.
Besides, the government also plans to integrate AYUSH doctors and have capacity
building programmes for other traditional healthcare providers such as Registered
Medical Practitioners (RMPs) and Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA) so that traditional
care practices and local remedies are encouraged.
Health ministry sources indicated that the AYUSH doctors may be trained further
to handle normal childbirth cases in remote areas. They will also be trained to
take care of serious medical cases so that the patient is stabilised before he/she
is sent to bigger hospital. Ministry officials said that this help will bring down
maternal and infant mortalities. Expressing concerns over the low density of doctors
and paramedical staff in India the Planning Commission's approach paper for the
12th Five Year Plan, has prescribed drastic reforms to improve healthcare.
As of now medical colleges are concentrated in only 193 districts of the country
that have 640 medical colleges among them. The rest 447 districts do not have any
medical college. Against 335 colleges, there are about 319 Auxiliary nurses and
midwives (ANM) training schools, 49 health and family welfare training schools and
only 34 LHV (Lady Health Visitor) schools. The present doctor patient ratio 0.6
per 1000 while the ratio of health workers (including midwives, nurses etc) is 2.5
per 1000.
"To fill the gap in training needs of paramedical professionals, the 12th Plan proposes
to develop each of the district hospitals into knowledge centres, and 4,535 CHCs
into training institutions," says the Planning Commission report.
The government has already begun work on six All India Institute of Medical Sciences
(AIIMS)-like medical institutions in different states. The government has so far
released Rs. 847 crore for the purpose. These AIIMS like institutions are coming up
in Bihar (Patna), Chhattisgarh (Raipur), Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal), Orissa (Bhubaneswar),
Rajasthan (Jodhpur) and Uttarakhand (Rishikesh) under the first phase of Pradhan
Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana.
Over the last three years, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had announced to
increase about 5,000 post graduate seats in medical colleges across the country
in order to increase in the number of specialist doctors.
Courtesy: DNA India
