To meet shortage of docs, 5,000 more seats in 2013

The amendments to the Medical Council of India Act have borne fruit, as more than 5,000 new seats will be added this year, which may mean more doctors will be available in the public health sector in the future. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: May 20, 2013, 02:58:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The amendments in May last year to the archaic Medical Council of India Act - which made establishing new medical colleges difficult - have borne fruit, as more than 5,000 new seats will be added this year, which may mean more doctors will be available in the public health sector in the future.

After realising the existing number of seats in medical colleges was not able to meet the growing demand of professionals in the fast-expanding public and private health sectors, the government allowed opening of medical colleges on land plots of smaller sizes besides increasing the intake of students from 150 to 250 students in medical colleges that are at least 10 years old.

The government also eased the norms for a hospital to be attached with a medical college.

The changes in the law resulted in creation of about 3,595 more seats in 2012. This year, the government expects 5,000 more seats will be added, most of these in 10-15 new medical colleges set up after the amendments.

The Planning Commission’s 12th five-year plan (2012-17) data shows 40% of posts for doctors in the public health sector are vacant. The shortage is more acute in rural areas. The government hopes the new medical graduates will fill up vacancies in government health institutions after their graduation.

“It is a fact that doctors from government hospitals are joining private sector and it becomes difficult to get a replacement,” health minister Gulam Nabi Azad told Hindustan Times.

He said the old law was not relevant today when land resources are scarce, especially in urban areas.

“The capital cost of opening a medical college fell by 25% after the amendments,” Azad said.

While easing the norms to increase more seats, the government also increased the retirement age of medical faculty to 70 years from 58. The government is also trying to have more specialists by allowing two post-graduate students for one professor. Earlier the norm was one PG student per professor.

The health minister said most of the medical colleges in the country were based in southern and western India. Therefore the government was making efforts to start medical colleges in eastern and northern parts of the country. To that effect, the government has already started working on five AIIMS-like institutes in various parts of the country.

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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