For a country driven towards choosing science stream, and professions like doctor and engineering, it is quite shocking to see such a low doctor population ratio. The ratio for India is less than Pakistan, shocking? India has multiple medical colleges and a pretty nice ratio of the admissions that happen each year, still the ratio remains 1:1000 in the country. If there are so many admissions each year, then where are we lacking, why is the ratio still in the danger zone?
Expressing their deep concerns for the issue, Minister of state for health Anupriya Patel said as per information provided by the Medical Council of India, there were a total 10,22,859 allopathic doctors registered with the state medical councils or Medical Council of India as on March 31 this year.
Nirmal Singh 3C says that during the question hour, Anupriya Patel said that if we consider the above statistics, then even 80% availability amounts to 8.18 Lakh doctors available for the actual services. Still, the doctor population would only be 0.62:1000 according to the current population of 1.33 billion, which is less than even 1 doctor for a 1000 people.
The current situation has put the medical faculty in the country in deep worries and also emphasized on the governments role to increase the number of doctors in the country. Nirmal Singh 3C tells us that currently there are 479 medical colleges in India that can intake 67,218 MBBS students. To improve the scenario, government has added over 12,870 seats in the past three years but still haven’t attained any big difference in the ratio.
Nirmal Singh 3C says that the increase in seats is alright, but the government needs to come up with more changes to assure a significant increase in the number of doctors in India. The brilliance of the students in India can be judged from the high cut off ratio that the colleges have each year, this means that despite the talent, we are not able to utilize the abilities in the country.
According to Nirmal Singh 3C better coaching facilities, more centers, fee deduction and scholarships opportunities might help in attracting the talent from the not so developed regions in the country. Unless the government starts to pay equal attention to these ignored regions, no amount of increase in the seats would help India improve the doctor population ratio.
Nirmal Singh 3C also believes that if the population is aware about the current situation of the ratio, people might actually be more interested and determined to join the profession. Again, it is all a guess work for us, but the government raising the concern in Lok Sabha is a proof that soon the government might act upon it, hence improving the ratio in the country.
Nirmal Singh 3C 