NEW DELHI: The Centre’s big push on medical education continues in India, with the government’s nod to 38 new medical colleges, including 24 government ones, in the 2021-22 academic session. Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu benefitted the most this year with nine and seven government medical colleges, respectively.
As compared to 2020-21 when 83,275 MBBS seats were available in India, the number of seats this year also rose to 88,120 — a rise of nearly 6 per cent as compared to the last year. The number of new colleges permitted this year is the third highest approvals since 2014 when the impetus to raise the number of MBBS seats in the country began. In 2014, there were 404 medical colleges with 54,348 MBBS seats in
the country.
“The rise in medical colleges is in line with our aim to provide at least one medical college for every district in India and we are also on track of upgrading many district hospitals into full-fledged medical colleges,” said an official in the medical education department of the Union health ministry. This, he explained, serves the dual purpose of providing secondary and tertiary healthcare services to patients in districts and also raising the patient-doctor ratio in India.
Welcoming the government’s focus, senior faculties in premier institutions asserted that the quality of teaching and learning should not be compromised. “Faculty shortage is a major problem in most medical colleges in India. There are reports that not only private institutes but even government colleges are relying on teachers on temporary basis.
This does not speak too well about the quality of education in medical colleges,” said a senior faculty with the University College of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. “Another major problem is lack of proper infrastructure which has not kept pace with the fast speed of increased seats and that should also be seriously addressed.”
Need to monitor teaching quality
Welcoming the government’s focus, senior faculties in premier institutions asserted that the quality of teaching and learning should not be compromised. Shortage of faculty is a major issue, they added.