JOIN USA recent World Health Organisation (WHO) report provides shocking insights into the abysmal quality of India’s healthcare workforce. The study points out that the country’s billion-strong population has just two million health workers; 39.6% of these are doctors, 30.5% nurses and midwives and just 1.2% dentists. It is not just the small number of health workers that is worrying. The few we have are largely unqualified. Of all doctors, 77.2% were allopathic; 31.4% of the so-called ‘allopathic doctors’ were found to have had education only up to the secondary school level and 57.3% did not have a medical qualification. A whopping 67.1% of nurses and midwives had studied only up to the secondary school level. Urban-rural and district-level differences in the density of health workers were enormous. Urban India seems far more fortunate; while 58.4% of urban allopa-thic doctors were appropriately qualified, only 18.8% of rural allopathic doctors had a medical qualification. Half of the 30 districts with the lowest number of ‘allopathic doctors,’ whether qualified or not, were in the Northeast or central India. Delhi and the state capitals were the best served by qualified healthcare professionals.
Some are likely to dismiss the report’s findings as it draws on data from the 2001 Census. They will argue that there has been a major expansion in institutions providing education in the medical, nursing and dental fields. However, other studies conducted in the years since, confirm that the quality of healthcare services in the country has made only marginal progress. The number of institutions providing medical education may have increased but how good is the education and training they provide? Many of them do not provide medical skills; they only sell degrees. Thus, even those who have a medical degree may not deserve it. In the circumstances, the healthcare workforce’s situation on the ground is likely to be far worse than that indicated by the WHO study.
The report provides insights into why India’s healthcare indicators are among the worst in the world. How can we expect infant or child mortality rates to reduce if the doctors and nurses attending to pregnant mothers are quacks? Can a person with only high school education diagnose tuberculosis, malaria or dengue fever? It is not surprising that millions of Indians are dying annually of treatable diseases. When those wielding knives, scalpels and surgical scissors are not qualified or skilled to do so, complications from simple surgical procedures are inevitable and mortality rates will soar. This has to change. The government must give priority to weeding out quacks and charlatans that are practising as doctors.