As part of its efforts to improve manpower in medical sector, Government is planning to upgrade district hospitals into medical colleges.
In the first phase, government has proposed to upgrade 58 district hospitals into medical colleges with each having atleast 100 MBBS seats.
The cost ceiling for each medical college is Rs 190 crores out which 75 per cent will be given by Centre and the rest by the state government. In north-east and hilly areas, Centre will bear 85 per cent of the upgradation cost, a senior Health Ministry official said.
"At present, only 58 out of the 400 odd districts in the country which do not have medical colleges are proposed to be covered. We should be looking to cover atleast 150 districts over the next four years.
"If resources become a constraint, the scheme could be expanded to public private mode where the investments on the medical college and upgradation of the district hospitals will be done by private players. The state governments may in return seek 50 per cent reservations of the seats in the medical colleges and 60-70 per cent of the beds in the hospitals as a State quota," said the official.
"Presently, 65 per cent of the total 404 medical colleges are located either in South or Western part of the country. So obviously, a large part of the country is underrepresented and likely to face shortage of doctors.
"If the number of medical colleges are not evenly distributed across the country, then it is bound to impact the availability of human resources like doctors, nurses and paramedics," the official explained.
The government has already approved upgradation of 22 district hospitals and has released Rs 140 crores as first installment in respect to 19 such hospitals.
The aim is to increase the availability of doctors, nurses and paramedics and also provide quality level secondary and tertiary care.
"With 9.2 lakh doctors on the MCI register and an assumption that 80 per cent of them being available for active duty, the doctor population ratio works out to 0.7 per 1000 as against the WHO norm of 1 per 1000," the official added.
