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Covid-19: Centre asks states to list all registered doctors
India has 1.1 million allopathic doctors registered with the Board of Governors, State Medical Councils, and Medical Council as of December 2019.
The Medical Council of India (MCI) has written to state councils to compile a list of doctors registered with them as part of an exercise to take stock of human resources available to treat Covid-19 patients.
The letter, sent to state councils last week by MCI’s board of governors, sought an updated list of registered medical practitioners and their contact details.
“The Medical Council of India has been entrusted for ensuring availability of registered medical practitioners (registered under the Indian Medical Council Act 1956/State Medical Council Acts) for tackling Covid-19 pandemic. It is requested to share the updated list of registered medical practitioners available in your medical council…,” said the directive to the state councils.
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Apart from the name and registration number of each doctor, the state councils have also been asked to provide mobile phone numbers, email IDs and contact addresses.
“This information should be sent to the MCI as early as possible, in view of the prevalent situation. This information will be further shared with the government authorities for their use, when required,” the letter said.
After receiving the MCI’s directive, states councils have started compiling the data.
Girish Tyagi, member of the Delhi Medical Council, said: “We are working on compiling the list. Once a medical practitioner registers, the name stays for at least five years in the state register, and some of them are PG students from other states who return to their respective state after their education is over.
“We need to weed out those names from the list, and with skeletal staff at our disposal right now, it might take a little longer to segregate those who are still practising in Delhi.”
India has 1.1 million allopathic doctors registered with the Board of Governors, State Medical Councils, and Medical Council as of December 2019.
“Assuming 80% availability, it is estimated that around 9.26 lakh doctors may be actually available for active service,” said minister of state for health Ashwini Kumar Choubey in the Lok Sabha.
For a population of 1.36 billion, this makes the doctor-population ratio 1:1,457, lower than the WHO’s recommended norm of 1:1,000.
For people in rural areas completely dependent on government hospitals and clinics, the government allopathic doctor-patient ratio is 1:10,926.
With Covid-19 cases rising, the government is gearing up to upgrade infrastructure and add to the human resource pool to deal with the situation.
Another directive sent to all state chief secretaries by the Union health ministry last week was for using the services of ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialists or postgraduate trainees for collecting samples for Covid-19 testing, as many states are facing a manpower shortage for collecting samples.
“You are aware that the country is in the midst of an unprecedented outbreak of Covid-19. One of the key components of our strategy to combat this outbreak is contact tracing and collection of nose and throat swab samples of potentially infected persons. There is an urgent need of trained and qualified personnel to collect these samples and the number of such persons needs to be augmented significantly,” said the health ministry’s directive.
“All States/UTs are, therefore, requested to organise collection of Covid-19 case samples by using the services of ENT specialists and residents. The services of these professionals working in all government and private medical colleges of the states may be drafted for this purpose,” the directive added.
A health ministry official, on condition of anonymity, said: “While the labs are enough, there was felt a shortage of trained people to collect samples. The experts discussed the matter and thought of using ENT specialists for the purpose as they already are trained in handling diseases of the nose and throat. The states have passed on the instructions to all medical institutions in this regard, and the process of involving specialists has begun.”
Experts said roping in trained people for the job will help.
“It is definitely a good idea as ENTs are more skilled to do the job. The problem is bigger in remote areas, where involving them should surely help,” said NN Mathur, ENT professor and former principal of Vardhman Mahavir Medical College (Safdarjung Hospital).
