More than 4,800 new PG medical seats in 2020-21 academic session

The board of governors of the medical council of India has decided to increase post-graduate medical seats for MD and MS programmes by over 4,800 to 36,192 for the next academic session. According to V K Paul, Chairman of BoG MCI, the rise in the number of seats is more than the overall number of additional seats created in the past five years. He also asserted that intake expansion would augment tertiary care in the country. Almost 44,000 post-graduate medical seats (36,192 MD/MS seats and 8,000 DNB/FNB seats) will be available for 54,000 undergraduate MBBS pass outs.

He also asserted that in 2014, the Narendra Modi government had vowed to double PG and UG medical seats by 2024. As a matter of fact, the board of governors authorised with the power of the Medical Council of India has given its consent to increase postgraduate medical seats in 2020-21. MD is a postgraduate degree in general medicine, while MS is the post graduate degree in general surgery. In 2014-15, there were more than 23,000 PG medical seats in both government and private medical colleges across the country. 

Mr Paul held that the Niti Aayog was working with the Ministry of Health to boost large hospitals to provide resident doctors Diplomate or Fellow of National Board (DNB/FNB) courses under the National Board of Examination. To address the dearth of qualified doctors and bridge gaps in medical education, recently the Niti Aayog had introduced the public-private partnership (PPP) model to bond new or prevailing private medical colleges with functional district hospitals to increase medical seats. 

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