The Union Health Ministry has initiated several steps to increase the number of medical specialists and the availability of faculty in the country. The ministry has proposed to increase the enrolment of post graduate students and decided to recognise the degrees and teaching experience gained by doctors of Indian origin from five English speaking countries, UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Officials in the health ministry said that as against the average global norm of 1:3 or 4, the teacher-student ratio in India has traditionally been 1:1. To increase the enrolment of Post Graduate students and, consequently, the availability of specialists, this ratio has been enhanced in broad specialities for professor and in super specialities for professors and associate professors, from the currently existing 1:1 to 1:2 to begin with.

Increase in the number of Post Graduate doctors will naturally increase the number of teachers due to the multiplier effect. With this decision, it is expected that, without substantive additional resource and infrastructure requirement, the number of Post Graduate specialists would dramatically increase by almost 5000 from the existing 13,000 to 18,000 within a short period of time, the official said.

The ministry sources said that the government also proposes to give permission to start Post Graduate courses in three Pre-clinical disciplines of Anatomy, Physiology and Bio-chemistry and four Para-clinical disciplines of Micro-biology, Forensic Medicine, Pharmacology and Community Medicine in the fourth year of MBBS instead of the existing practice of granting permission after the college is recognized, which usually takes six years. As a result of this measure, the availability of teaching staff in the above subjects will increase, which in turn will facilitate the starting of new colleges. The un-met demand of teachers in Pre and Para Clinical subjects was proving to be a problem in the initial years for starting of new medical colleges in the country, the official said.

Besides, s scheme for strengthening and upgradation of state government Medical Colleges for increasing the number of post graduate medical seats, particularly in the required fields of obstetrics & gynaecology, paediatrics, anaesthesia, etc and also for starting new post graduate disciplines such as geriatrics, blood transfusion, trauma care, family medicine, etc. is being implemented.

Under this scheme about 148 state government medical colleges will be able to receive financial assistance from the central government to upgrade the infrastructure, purchase equipment and also incur expenditure on salary of faculty and support staff. With this arrangement, an additional 5,000 Post Graduate seats are expected to be created in various medical colleges, official sources said.

In order to increase the availability of faculty in the country, apart from recognising the degrees and teaching experience gained by doctors of Indian origin from five English speaking countries, UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the government has decided to reduce the required teaching experience by one year in respective feeder cadres for professor/associate professorship.