Govt to relax norms for medical colleges

Government is in the process of liberalising norms and doing away with archaic rules for establishment of new medical colleges across the country to meet the ever growing demand of doctors.

According to sources, the Ministry of Health has asked the Medical Council of India (MCI), apex medical education regulator, to rationalise and redefine its norms for setting up medical colleges and do away with rules that add little value to education but lead to higher cost of education for students.

“The norms governing medical college establishment need to be reworked. We have asked the MCI to redefine and rationalise them to enable new medical colleges to come up. We plan to add at least 6,000 new MBBS seats in the next year. New norms need to reflect today’s needs,” a top Health Ministry official said.

Among norms under scanner are the requirement of vast spreads of land for colleges and compulsory auditoria, playgrounds, classrooms, libraries and labs of vast dimensions.
Also proposed is easing of norms for hiring of faculty by allowing adjunct faculty so as to reduce the high cost of medical education.

It is proposed to allow colleges to come up as multi- storey buildings comprising compact facilities of labs and libraries under new dimensions which the MCI will specify in place of old impractical ones. The government is keen to add at least 6,000 to 7,000 new MBBS seats in the coming year to help reduce the doctor-patient ratio which is a poor 1:2,000 currently.

“We are planning to ease norms for land requirement by allowing managements to set up medical colleges in multi- storeyed buildings instead of as huge unwieldy complexes spread over acres as is the current norm.