The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved a proposal for increasing nearly 10,000 MBBS seats at recognised government medical colleges across the country.
The proposal was considered by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, which cleared the financial allocation required for the additional MBBS seats. The proposal is aimed at increasing the number of doctors to help bring down the doctor-patient ratio from the current 1:2000 to 1:1000.
At present, there are around 50,000 MBBS seats across the country and the government plans to increase them to address the issue of shortage of doctors.
The government had last week cleared a proposal by the health ministry to set up 58 new medical colleges in states with central assistance and upgradation of district hospitals, thus helping create 5,800 more MBBS seats.
There are a total of 381 government medical colleges in the country with 49,918 MBBS seats registered with the apex medical regulator — the Medical Council of India.