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Proposals to create separate cadre for medical services

Last Updated 28 July 2014, 18:38 IST

The Union Health Ministry has received two proposals on the creation of a separate national cadre for medical services in the line of Indian Administrative Service and Indian Police Service.

Creation of an “Indian Medical Service”, as per the proposal, would help fill up the vacancies in hundreds of posts of super speciality doctors in government hospitals and health centres. Once the budget session of the Parliament gets over on August 14, the ministry plans to convene a meeting of state health secretaries where the proposal may be discussed.

The agenda and date of the health secretaries meeting, however, is yet to be finalised.“The idea was not mooted by the Health Ministry. But there is no question of implementing it without taking the states on-board as health is a state subject. Consultation with the state governments is essential,” Union Health Secretary Lov Verma told Deccan Herald.

The first proposal came from joint action council of Service Doctors’ Organisation, which submitted it to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), which in turn asked the Health Ministry to have a look. The second proposal came from Jivabhai Ambarlal Patel, a former Congress MP from Mehsana in Gujarat.

Dr Jitendra Singh, a minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office, too stated consultation with the state governments is pre-requisite for considering creation of an Indian Medical Service.

While it is a known fact that India has a poor doctor-patient ratio, a 2013 report published in Indian Journal of Medical Research, suggests 70 per cent posts of specialists (surgeons, physicians, pediatricians and gynaecologists) at the community health centres are lying vacant.

India does not have any authentic and reliable database on the number of specialists. But data available with some of professional bodies and collated by the Public Health Foundation of India project a dismal picture.

For instance, there is only about 15,000 registered anaesthesiologist and 18,000 surgeons. A country of India’s size with 120 crore population has only 27,000 gynaecologists, 23,000 paediatricians, 16,000 eye surgeons, 10,000 orthopaedic specialists, 4,000 psychiatrists and less than 4,000 cardiologists. The developed nations have four times better doctor availability.

“India is facing real shortage of specialists. Eighty percent of the posts of specialist in community health centre are lying vacant. The need of the hour is to put emphasis on quality education which is essential to produce experts,” said Madhav G Deo,  a member of the Medical Council of India’s academic council.

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(Published 28 July 2014, 18:38 IST)

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