New Delhi: Medical students are in for a bonanza with the government planning to double availability of undergraduate and postgraduate seats to meet a target of 80,000 MBBS and 45,000 PG seats in India by 2021.
The objective is also to improve the availability of doctors by ensuring a doctor-patient ratio of 1:1000 as against the current 1:2000 ratio, Health Ministry officials said.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is targeting additional 38,431 seats in the MBBS and 22,806 seats in the PG streams by 2021, representing a whopping rise of 92.45 per cent and 102.75 per cent respectively over the current availability. The target is 80,000 MBBS seats and 45,000 PG seats by 2021, the officials said at the meeting of Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Health chaired by Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad here today. The meeting was called to discuss the scenario of medical infrastructure in the country.
At present, there are 41,569 MBBS seats in the 335 medical colleges across India and 22,194 PG seats. However, most of these seats and medical colleges are concentrated in the southern and western states with the central Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh barely getting any share in medical infrastructure.
Ministry`s latest data shows that 66 per cent of the 335 medical colleges and 69 per cent of the current MBBS seats are located at present in the Southern and Western states, including Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Goa. PTI