75 hospitals proposed to be made medical colleges

Seventy-five more district hospitals may soon turn into medical colleges in the coming years with the government now examining a proposal by the Ministry of Health that looks at the expansion of its schemes.

If the government clears this proposal, a total of 157 district hospitals will become medical colleges as per the centrally sponsored scheme that aims at boosting the availability of the human resource for the health sector.

The government had cleared converting 58 district hospitals into medical colleges in the first phase and another 24 in the second phase earlier as per the "establishment of new medical colleges by upgrading district or referral hospitals" scheme. So far, 39 medical colleges have been set up while the rest in the first two phases are under construction.

The third phase could incur an expenditure of around Rs 325 crore. The BJP in its manifesto had earlier promised that it will get medical colleges in all districts, especially the under-served ones.

Senior officials said the proposal for the third phase has been sent for approval to the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC). Once the EFC clears it, this will be sent to the Cabinet for final approval.

As per the scheme, the states will have to earmark hospitals in underserved districts to be converted into medical colleges. For this, the district should have no other private or government medical college.

The reason behind the scheme is that medical colleges are unevenly spread across urban and rural areas of the country.

The scheme is aimed at creating additional 10,000 MBBS and 8,000 postgraduate seats in the country and bridging the gap in a number of seats available in government and private sector. It will also mitigate the shortage of doctors and medical faculty by increasing the number of seats and to achieve the desired doctor-population ratio.

"By opening new government medical colleges by attaching existing district/referral hospitals on one hand and liberalising some MCI norms on the other, a substantial number of MBBS seats can be increased thereby making affordable medical education available in the country and mitigating shortage of doctors with respect to the population and distribution of the human resources across the country," according to the scheme.