In
order to bring down the shortage of doctors and improve healthcare
services at the minutest level, the government is planning to have
medical colleges in each district.
It has plans to convert district hospitals into training institute the paramedical personnel as well.
Besides,
the government also plans to integrate AYUSH doctors and have capacity
building programmes for other traditional healthcare providers such as
Registered Medical Practitioners (RMPs) and Traditional Birth Attendants
(TBA) so that traditional care practices and local remedies are
encouraged.
Health
ministry sources indicated that the AYUSH doctors may be trained further
to handle normal chidbirth cases in remote areas.
They
will also be trained to take care of serious medical cases so that the
patient is stabilised before he/she is sent to bigger hospital. Ministry
officials said that this help will bring down maternal and infant
mortalities.
Expressing
concerns over the low density of doctors and paramedical staff in India
the Planning Commission’s approach paper for the 12th Five Year Plan,
has prescribed drastic reforms to improve healthcare.
As
of now medical colleges are concentrated in only 193 districts of the
country that have 640 medical colleges among them. The rest 447
districts do not have any medical college.
Against
335 colleges, there are about 319 Auxiliary nurses and midwives (ANM)
training schools, 49 health and family welfare training schools and only
34 LHV (Lady Health Visitor) schools.
The
present doctor patient ratio 0.6 per 1000 while the ratio of health
workers (including midwives, nurses etc) is 2.5 per 1000.
“To
fill the gap in training needs of paramedical professionals, the 12th
Plan proposes to develop each of the district hospitals into knowledge
centres, and 4,535 CHCs into training institutions,” says the Planning
Commission report.
The
government has already begun work on six All India Institute of Medical
Sciences (AIIMS) -like medical institutions in different states.
The
government has so far released Rs847 crore for the purpose. These AIIMS
like institutions are coming up in Bihar (Patna), Chhattisgarh
(Raipur), Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal), Orissa (Bhubaneswar), Rajasthan
(Jodhpur) and Uttarakhand (Rishikesh) under the first phase of Pradhan
Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana .
Over
the last three years, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had
announced to increase about 5,000 post graduate seats in medical
colleges across the country in order to increase in the number of
specialist doctors.
Source:DNA
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