| Health woes: 1 Govt doc for over 11,000 people in India | | | Agencies
New Delhi, June 29: Government doctors in India are handling whopping levels of population load with each catering to 11,082 people. The WHO recommended doctor-population ratio is 1: 1000.
The Health Ministry's latest statistics on human resources in health reveal a sad state of doctor-population ratio that stands at a dismal 1:1,223 despite marginal recent gains.
Data also tell an important story on why the government should invest more in health than it is currently doing with just 1.1 per cent of the GDP.
One government allopathic doctor is today serving many more people on an average than his counterpart in the private sector. Despite massive privatisation of health sector in recent years, the population burden on government doctors remains the highest. The National Health Profile-2018 openly acknowledges this fact. "At present, the average population served per government allopathic doctor is 11, 082," it says. In all, India currently has 10,41,395 registered doctors for a projected current population of 1,274 million (127 crore). Out of total registered doctors, only 1,14,969 (11 per cent) are government allopathic doctors, the rest being in private sector. Simple calculation reveals the overall doctor-people ratio for India as 1:1,223; the private doctor-population ratio as 1:1,375 (private doctors are 9,26,426) and the government doctor-population ratio is 1:11,082.
Another telling trend in the national data is that worst-performing states in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for admission to MBBS courses have the highest numbers of registered doctors in India. NEET-Undergraduate 2018 results showed Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra had the lowest pass percentage in India at 39.55 and 39.57.
Now, the latest government data on human resources in health shows that Maharashtra has the highest number of registered doctors at 1,53,513 (14 per cent of all registered Indian doctors) and Tamil Nadu follows closely at 1,26,399. Tamil Nadu resisted NEET-UG for years until the apex court stepped in to enforce it in the interest of uniform standards and student quality. The test has only recently broken the nexus between big money with which even a mediocre student could "buy" an MBBS seat and become a doctor. The best-performing state in NEET-UG 2018, Rajasthan, has 40,559 registered doctors - less than half of what Tamil Nadu has.
The statistics clearly point to the need for enhancing public investments in health considering out of 70,000 MBBS seats today, only around 31,278 are in government medical colleges and the rest are in private ones.
The National Health Policy-2017 has pledged to raise public expenditure in health from the current levels of 1.1 per cent of the GDP to 2.5 per cent of the GDP by 2025. |
|
