The Union Health Ministry will amend the Medical Council of India regulations to further liberalise norms with regard to land requirements, student-teacher ratio and allowing public-private partnership to increase the number of medical colleges in the country and thereby boosting the healthcare access.

The ministry has already made some relaxations with regard to land requirements and case loads as part of its reforms in the medical education sector with a view to simplify the process of setting up new medical colleges in deficient states and regions and increase the number of post graduate seats.

The government will amend the MCI regulations so that norms will be further liberalized apart from allowing public-private partnerships to facilitate more medical colleges and in turn increasing the number of doctors in the country, sources said.

The healthcare sector in the country is still way behind with regard to the number of doctors available for the people, according to the latest figures available with the MCI. There are around 733,700 allopathic doctors registered with the MCI. However, the percentage of allopathic doctor in proportion to population is just 0.06 per cent and the ratio is one doctor per 1584 patients.

In addition to this, there are more than six lakh practitioners of Indian systems of medicine and homoeopathy. Taking the numbers of all these doctors together, the ratio in proportion to population is around 1:860, according to the information. Currently, there are 299 medical colleges for teaching modern medicine, with an annual intake of 35,152 seats.

Separate measures have been taken to enhance the number of medical specialists by rationalizing the teacher-student ratio and formulating a scheme for Rs 1350 crore to enable the state government medical colleges to increase number of PG medical seats. These steps will increase the intake at Post Graduate level from the existing 13000 to 18000 seats, sources said.