A health foundation and a city- based umbrella business body have signed an agreement for organising capacity building programmes for skilling healthcare professionals especially in areas of chronic diseases and prevention of non-communicable siseases.
The Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI) signed the five-year MoU aimed at augmenting the Centre's 'Skill India' flagship project and also to create a robust and vibrant eco-system for quality skill development in healthcare sector.
The MoU signed by President of PHDCCI Mahesh Gupta and President of PHFI K Srinath Reddy, will undertake country-wide initiatives for training workshops for industry, government (central and state) and MNCs on important public health issues, with a special focus on non-communicable diseases.
"The Indian healthcare sector today is growing at a brisk pace and this MoU comes at a time when the Skill India movement is looking at bringing about convergence," Gupta said.
Pointing out the major constraints faced by healthcare professionals, Gupta said this sector in India is "suffering" with overworked professionals as there is a severe shortage of staff.
The skill development workshops can be used across India to scale up and get this workforce to be competent in healthcare space.
According to the most recent figures reported in the World Health Statistics 2011, the density of doctors in India is 6 for a population of 10,000, while that of nurses and midwives is 13 per 10,000 population.
India has a doctor-to-population ratio of 0.5:1000 in comparison to 0.3 in Thailand, 0.4 in Sri Lanka, 1.6 in China, 5.4 in the UK, and 5.5 in the United States of America.
PHFI in its 2012 report estimated a shortage of 6.4 million allied health professionals in the country. The report highlighted the gap in both sheer number of professionals of various specialties as well as the quality of skills acquired by the graduating students from several hundreds of institutions across the country.
