Prob. of Doctors

China devised practical ways to deliver healthcare to rural populations by deploying its band of ‘barefoot doctors’ from the 1960s

The allopathic doctor-patient ratio is a dismal 1:1,722.
Nevertheless, the Med ical Council of India’s proposal for a three-and-a-half-year course leading to a diploma in Bachelor of Rural Medicine and Surgery (BRMS) to produce a class of allopathic practitioners who hail from rural areas and will serve in notified rural areas may turn out to be a cure worse than the disease. Chhattisgarh’s experiment with a controversial three-year medical course (introduced in 2000 and scrapped in 2004) should provide a cautionary tale. The key question is: should rural folk be short-changed when it comes to the education, training, and calibre of medical practitioners?

The number of MBBS seats in India is less than 31,000 today which is far from adequate.
The challenge before the government is straightforward: it is to increase the MBBS-level intake manifold, rationalising the process of setting up medical colleges — and cleansing the clearance system of multi-point transactional corruption. A package of well-considered and sustainable measures, including attractive incentives, to ensure that a significantly greater number of doctors work in the countryside, must be put in place.