The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)-like institutions will be set up in every State in a phased manner, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare J.P. Nadda has said.
Mr. Nadda, who was at the Government Medical College here on Friday to lay the foundation stone for various projects, said that Kerala too would get its AIIMS-like institution in the near future and that a Central team would be sent to inspect the sites that the State government had identified for the same, at the suitable time.
Mr. Nadda said that making up the shortage of human resources in health sector and at the same time, maintaining the quality of medical education was a dual challenge that the Centre was trying to tackle now. The country needed at least 14 lakh doctors to maintain the World Health Organisation-recommended doctor-population ratio of 1:1,000, but was short of at least eight to nine lakh doctors. Paramedics were also in short supply.
For pragmatic approach
He said that the regulatory bodies in the health sector needed to relax the norms and take a ‘pragmatic approach’ and hence the government was engaged in discussions with the Medical Council of India on how a balance could be maintained.
He said that the government was trying to address the regional imbalance in the area of medical education, with 65 per cent of the premier educational institutions situated in the southern and western States. Of the 6,640 districts in the country, about 400 districts did not have a medical education institute. Hence the government had decided to upgrade at least 100 district hospitals as medical colleges with 100 MBBS seats each.
The government was also looking at the increased utilisation of information technology devices for the teaching of non-clinical subjects and continuing medical education programmes.
