Sir,
We are mostly unable to access our fundamental right of getting quality healthcare service at affordable cost, mainly due to less availability of doctors in this sector who are also not uniformly distributed across the country.
India has one doctor for its 1400 citizens compared to 250 persons in developed nations. This doctor citizen ratio further varies due to its urban versus rural dichotomy. Two third of India live in rural areas and as per their Rural Health Statistics 2021-22, there is more than fifty percent shortage of doctors in rural India. Practically specialised medical facilities also remain restricted to developed and urban cities. This distribution of healthcare specialists also varies from state to state. States like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have one doctor for about 600 persons compared to more than 3000 persons for other states like Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.
Our existing healthcare system is also faced with yet another peculiar situation of irrational distribution of doctors across its rural and urban demarcations. Doctors in our country hesitate to serve in rural areas mainly due to lack of infrastructure and support system besides getting inadequate remuneration.
Under prevailing medical curriculum, undergraduate medical students show less interest in practical aspects of medicine as they precisely remain focused to get in to their post graduation. Immediately after graduation, majority of doctors aspire to go for higher studies in the subjects of their choice, those are mostly commercially aimed, creating vacancies in certain specialized fields which ultimately end up in complicating the uniform delivery of specialized medical services in India. Gaining technical competence by undertaking this selective higher studies also result in to Brain drain due to which sizable number of its highly qualified and trained doctors prefer overseas lucrative greener pastures, at the cost of their social obligations and national responsibilities.
At the moment India require not only to increase the number of doctors by increasing the number of medical colleges, both private and Government but equally need to regulate technical advancement through higher studies in an uniform manner. To check exodus of their doctors, Indian Government need to be proactive in immediately filling up large number of vacancies of doctors, irrespective of their geographic locations. Sanctioning of 50 new medical colleges generating more than fifty thousand doctors per year is yet another positive step in this direction. But at the same time derecognising nearly 100 medical colleges in a year those fail to meet the laid down norms by NMC, ultimately again reduce the number of doctors available in the system.
Present medical system of India need transformation so as to bring transparency in its regulatory mechanism and reformation in delivery of quality healthcare facility at ground level. This type of revamping, as is being periodically done in the countries like as big as United States and as small as Singapore, requires to be done by India also.
Kanka Pandita
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