`Only one doctor for every 2,000 Indians`

New Delhi: Admitting shortage of human resources in health sector, government said India has a doctor for every 2,000 persons and a nurse for every 1,130 persons.

Minister for Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha said even though there were six lakh practitioners of Indian system of Medicine and Homoeopathy, there was still a shortage. He said that as per current estimation, the doctor-nurse ratio in the country was around 1:1.5. Azad told the House that in view of this shortage, the augmentation of health resources was one of the thrust areas. The Minister said that in order to enhance the availability of medical professionals, government was facilitating the setting up of more medical colleges and increasing their training capacity. Government has amended various regulations to provide for relaxed requirement of land, reduced teacher-student ratio, relaxed bed-strength, for setting up more medical colleges and augment the resources in the health sector, said Azad. The Minister said the central government, under National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), is providing financial support to state governments for engagement of staff on contractual basis. Multi-skilling of doctors to overcome the shortage of specialists, provision of incentives to serve in rural areas and improved accommodation arrangements are also undertaken to bridge the gap in availability of human resources, he said. PTI