A medical college in each district of the country: Govt

Hit by huge shortage of health personnel, the government is set to provide financial help to state governments to start a medical college in each of 626 districts of India, Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Aug 2, 2012, 21:37:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Hit by huge shortage of health personnel, the government is set to provide financial help to state governments to start a medical college in each of 626 districts of India.

A planning commission committee had pointed out that huge shortage of medical staff in rural India was crippling public health services in te villages.

One has to pay around 71% of health expenses from his or her own pocket resulting in impoverishment, the panel said.

The panel had also pointed out that graduates of medical colleges in urban areas were not willing to work in rural India leading to the shortage.

Government data reveals that there is one doctor in the country for every 2,000 people with around 8.56 lakh doctors in the country.

The vacancies are on the rise in new health centers set up in rural India under the National Rural Health Mission.

In a bid to overcome the shortage which is expected to rise to around 50% in next four years, the UPA government would soon be announcing a scheme to set up a medical college linked with every district level hospital.

“It will help to cope with the urgent requirement of medical staff in rural India,” said a senior government official, adding that it will also help in reducing out of pocket health expenses to 50%.

Government officials said that in addition to providing health education, these medical colleges would also be used to train accredited social health activists (ASHAs) and anganwadi workers to improve the health parameters in the rural areas.

“Medical education should be made responsible for the health of the population in the catchment area,” an official said, explaining that main focus of the new scheme, which is expected to cost the Central government around Rs 20,000 crore in the next four years.

The government is expected to announce the new scheme at a meeting of the planning commission presided by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to finalise the 12th five year plan in August.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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