Ratio of population to number of available doctors in India is lower than the world standard. The WHO prescribes the ratio to be 1:1000 whereas India has a ratio of around 1:1450.
Impact of low doctor density
While healthcare is a direct impact area due to shortage of doctors, there are other areas too, which get impacted by this ratio.
Let’s talk about the directly impacted area
Less number of doctors per population size impacts the amount and quality of healthcare to be provided to the citizen of the country. Both in urban as well as rural area, there is dearth of good doctors. Shortage of specialized doctors is a bigger concern. That makes availability of good healthcare for critical diseases a rarity is smaller towns and semi-urban areas. There are many urban areas without or inadequate facility for specialized technology for treatment and testing.
The healthcare situation in India has improved significantly since independence. Take any statistics an we have improved on those count. Be it infant mortality rate has improved 3 folds, Maternal mortality rae has improved 10 folds; life expectancy at birth has gone us by more than double’ Ratio of doctors per 1000 populace has improved more than 3 times. India has emerged as a center of medical tourism, especially for African and middle eastern countries, due to proximity as well as cost advantage. But still, the overall picture of healthcare in India has lot of grey pixels.
Spend on healthcare in Indian budget is around 1.6% of GDP, which is expected to go up to 2.5%. Though it is still lot less than what a country like India deserves, it may mean that the ecosystem is set to improve a lot.
As of now India has around 540 medical colleges and 64 institutes offer standalone PG courses. Out of these 279 are government medical colleges whereas remaining are the private colleges. The surge in government medical colleges has been seen in the last 5 years with 90 colleges seeing day of the light. For the first time, we have more govt medical colleges than the private ones. The situation is set to improve further as another 75 new govt run medical colleges are set to open in next couple of years.
This is good news for Indian students in many ways. Lack of number of governments run institute has impacted cost of study as well as standard of education. Increased corruption is another dimension, resultant of dearth of medical education facilities offered by the govt. With new colleges opening, there will be increased opportunity for the students to realize their dreams. More govt colleges will mean that the dreams will e realized at a much more reasonable cost. With govt sector colleges providing better level of education, we, the citizens can hope to have better doctors in future.
When we were students, there were many entrance exams for medical as well as engineering colleges. Govt has combined the entrance exams of medical colleges under NEET. The students benefit from this too:
- Uniformity of syllabus and pattern of exams keeps the studies focused
- Students do not have to appear for multiple exams and waste energy and money in travel again and again. This becomes significant for the areas which do not have exam centers.
- Since evaluation is based on one common exam, ranking of the students provide much clearer picture and makes the counselling process hassle-free
At the same time there are some disadvantages of having common exam for example, that one exam becomes critical and one bad performance on one bad day impacts career of the students.
In spite of some shortcomings, common exam has come up as a boon to the students. What they need to do is to focus on studies with a good mentor. Availability of online classes has made it possible for students to obtain access to good teachers in cost effective manner. I will talk about that in details in another blog.
As we have just come around the corner for this year NEET exams, which were delayed due to the pandemic and we start a fresh year of preparation for next year NEET exams, I wish all the best to the aspirants.
Live curiously, study hard and Improve continually.