More opportunities for medical aspirants

By Richha Bhatnagar

If becoming a doctor has been your dream, you may be one step closer to it now. The number of seats in medical colleges are set to go up.

In its report to the Union Health Ministry, the panel on health for 12th five year plan has proposed toting up 18,000 additional undergraduate medical seats and 11,000 post-graduate seats from 2012 to 2017. As per panel recommendations, UG medical seats should be increased from 41,569 to 66,000 and PG seats from 20,868 to 31,000.

Other proposals:

• Setting up of 30 new colleges with the facility of public financing in states
• To start paramedical education in the 149 government medical colleges and paramedical institutions
• Setting up of 132 Auxiliary Nursing Midwifery and 137 General Nursing Midwifery schools through public financing with a focus on under-serviced areas

At present, India is a producer of 30, 000 doctors, 18,000 specialists, 30,000 AYUSH doctors, 54,000 nurses, 15,000 ANMs and 36,000 pharmacists yearly. The geographical and rural-urban disparity in training facilities and availability of human resources still exists.

According to the report, currently, medical colleges exist only in 193 districts of the total of 640 districts and the remaining districts don't have a medical college. (Read more...)