Shortage of Manpower in Health Sector स्वास्थ्य क्षेत्र में जनशक्ति की कमी

(a) & (b)  Public health and hospitals being a State subject, the primary responsibility to ensure availability of healthcare professionals in public health facilities lies with the State/UT Governments. However, under the National Health Mission (NHM), financial and technical support is provided to States/UTs to strengthen their healthcare systems including support for engagement of doctors on contractual basis, based on the requirements posed by the States/UTs in their Programme Implementation Plans (PIPs).

Under NHM, States are encouraged to adopt flexible norms for engaging specialist
doctors for public health facilities. These include various mechanisms for €contracting in and
€contracting out of specialist services, methods of engaging specialists outside the government system for service delivery at public facilities, offering negotiable salaries to attract Specialists including flexibility in strategies such as ‘You quote, we pay”.

Financial support is also provided to States for providing performance-based incentives, hard area allowance, providing accommodation and transport facilities in rural and remote areas, sponsoring training programmes, etc  for  engaged human resources to address the  issue of shortage in the public health facilities.

Also, States are advised to put in place transparent policies of posting and transfer, and ensure rational deployment of healthcare professionals. As the posts required for health facilities are filled up by respective State/UT Governments, they are impressed upon from time to time to fill up the vacant posts.

Further, there are 536 medical colleges, 313 dental colleges, approx. 80,000 MBBS and 47,000 Post Graduate medical seats, approx. 27000 BDS and 6300 MDS seats available in the country. Besides, there are around 8,500 Nursing Institutes producing about 3.2 lakh nursing personnel annually.

As per  the  information available  with the  respective  Councils, 9.27 lakh allopathic doctors, 2.01 lakh dentists and 19.63 lakh nursing personnel may actually be available for active services.

The Government has taken several steps to increase the number of doctors in the country.
These include:

• The ratio of teachers to students for Professor has been revised from 1:1 to 1:2 for all MD/MS disciplines and 1:1 to 1:3 in all clinical subjects in Government funded medical colleges and in Private medical colleges with 15 years standing. Further, for Associate Professor, the said ratio has been revised from 1:1 to 1:2 and 1:3 if he/she is a unit head in all clinical subjects in Government medical colleges and in Private medical colleges with 15 years standing. This would result in increase in number of PG seats in the country.

• DNB qualification has been recognized for appointment as faculty  to take care of shortage of faculty.

• Enhancement of maximum intake capacity at MBBS level from 150 to 250.

• Relaxation in the norms of setting up of Medical College in terms of requirement for faculty, staff, bed strength and other infrastructure.

• Minimum requirement of land for establishment of medical college in metropolitan cities as notified under Article 243P(c) of the Constitution of India has been dispensed with.

• Strengthening/upgradation of State Government Medical Colleges for starting new PG courses/Increase of PG seats.

• Establishment  of  New   Medical  Colleges  by  upgrading  district/referral  hospitals preferably in underserved districts of the country.

• Strengthening/ upgradation of existing State Government/Central Government Medical Colleges to increase MBBS seats.

• Enhancement of age limit for appointment/ extension/ re-employment against posts of teachers/dean/principal/ director in medical colleges upto 70 years.

The above statement was submitted by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Department of Health and Family Welfare of undermentioned Lok Sabha Question:-