New Delhi: With the availability of doctors being a dismal 0.5 for every 1,000 persons in the country, the Centre has proposed to create an additional 15,800 MBBS seats, Lok Sabha was informed on Friday.
"The current doctor-population ratio in the country is approximately 1:1,700, yielding a density of 0.5 doctors per thousand people, which is not adequate," Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Ghulam Nabi Azad, said in a statement.
Azad said that as per a high-level expert group report which has been presented to Planning Commission, an additional 187 medical colleges are required in under-served districts during the 12th and 13th Plans.
The Union government has approved three centrally sponsored schemes aimed at, among others, upgrading 58 district hospitals into medical colleges and increasing undergraduate and postgraduate seats at government medical colleges, he added.
To facilitate the setting up of more medical colleges, the Centre has also amended the regulations for teacher-student ratio, land requirement, bed strength, bed occupancy, maximum admission capacity, etc. He said.
As a solution to the problem of land availability, a proposal has also been okayed for the setting up of split campuses of government medical colleges at two separate locations, which, however, have to be situated within 10km of each other, he added.
