Easier norms may lead to more medical colleges in Odisha
December 24th, 2011
Following are excerpts from a report in Times of India.
Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday asked the Medical Council of India (MCI) to prepare a series of medical reforms within a month. One of the crucial reforms is regarding land required to start medical colleges.
Now, the ministry allows a medical college to start on a 10-acre plot in nine cities – Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kanpur and Pune. It is planning to expand this list and include state capitals of Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, which are not only facing acute shortage of human resources, but also have poor health indicators.
The ministry will allow these states to have split campuses – hospital and medical college within 10km of each other. This facility is available only in north-eastern and hill states, which require 20 acres of plot to start a medical college.
… The high-power expert group (HLEG) of the Planning Commission working on universal health coverage has proposed a phased addition of 187 colleges. The HLEG said by 2015 under phase A, 59 new medical colleges will admit students in the 15 states of Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, UP and West Bengal.
By 2017, 13 of these states will have an additional 70 medical colleges, and by 2022, 58 additional colleges will be built in two additional phases (2017-20 and 2020-22). By 2022, India will have one medical college per 25 lakhs in all states except Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
"The implementation of HLEG’s recommendations will enable the additional availability of 1.2 lakh doctors by 2017 and another 1.9 lakh doctors between 2017 and 2022. With this rate of growth, it is expected that the HLEG target of one doctor per 1,000 will be achieved by 2028," the report said.
These easing of norms would indeed help. In particular, the plan to expand Capital Hospital in Bhubaneswar to a medical college is stuck because of the land requirements. With the ease of the norms many large hospitals, which already have or are close to having the required number of beds, can have an associated medical college.
The ease of the norms should be such that many district hospitals can also have medical colleges. That will spread the medical colleges to other districts.
Entry Filed under: Bhubaneswar-Cuttack-Puri- Khurda area (1),Capital Medical College, Bhubaneswar,Private medical colleges
2 Writeup
1. ranjan | December 25th, 2011 at 4:19 am
Good move by the center.However my concern why the state govt cant have similar moves when the govt can consider cities beyond Delhi and Mumbai.lets be very clear still now we dont see BBSR in the wishlist of bureaucrats.Leave alone the govt backed industries.My question when center can think of expanding to cities like BBSR and other major cites of UP,Bihar etc then why cant state govt(Orissa govt) can allow medical college like ESIC to Rourkela.Why it keeps on hiding and giving lame excuses like the one where state govt says if the center in case dont have issues we will allot land at Rourkela.On the other hand the center clearly stated it dont have issues where you put up the college within the state.For example Rajasthan.Now whos got to take the blame.Stop fooling us .The IIT at BBSR will come earlier then BPUT at Rourkela.Thats the most disapointing but a real evidence of the double standards maintained by state govt.
2. Rabi | December 27th, 2011 at 2:54 pm
I don’t think BBSR is facing acute shortage of human resources, and have poor health indicators.