Union ministry of health is planning to set up a unit of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Karnataka. There are currently 12 AIIMS in India. The move by the health ministry is expected to offset the serious shortage of doctors. The current ratio of doctor-patient ratio is 1:2000. But with the increase in the number of AIIMS, the government expects to achieve the target of 1:1000 by 2020. It would also increase the number of MBBS seats to 80,000 from the present 41,569 and PG admission seats to 45,000 from the current 22,194 by 2021.

The announcement came in from minister of health and family welfare Dr. Harsh Vardhan who was in Bengaluru recently for a state visit to review the progress of the national health schemes in Karnataka.

“Three locations have been suggested to replicate the AIIMS model said Dr. Vardhan. Among the prerequisite indicated by the minister to establish AIIMS was the need to identify 200 acres of land by the state. In the case of Karnataka, the state government had communicated to the Centre and shared the three locations which were seen to be suitable for having an infrastructure like AIIMS.

According to state government sources, these were Gulbarga, Bellary and Hubli districts. The key reason to look at locations beyond Bengaluru was the need for land. More over Bengaluru had adequate number of medical colleges and there was a need to look at other promising districts in the state which already had medical colleges successful in terms of imparting quality education.

Now the Ministry of Health was in the process of viewing the benefits of the three locations, said Dr Vardhan.

The Centre had also received a proposal to consider the advanced hospital in Gulbarga which is a northern district in the state which was being managed by the Employees State Insurance Corporation for setting up the AIIMS. There was a request to run it through the health ministry instead of ESIC which is currently being weighed upon, he said.

Therefore, all procedures for the establishment of an AIIMS like institute were under the scrutiny of the central government. The seat offered for students seeking admission into AIIMS would be purely through merit and the selection process would be transparent and accessible to all, said Dr. Vardhan.

Officials from hospitals like Victoria, Lady Curzon, NIMHANS and Jayadeva said that AIIMS is a cluster of autonomous government or public medical colleges . The first AIIMS was set up in New Delhi in 1956. In an effort to duplicate the presence of the institution, the Union government in 2012 set up six of these at Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, Bhubaneshwar in Orrisa, Jodhpur in Rajasthan, Patna in Bihar, Raipur in Chattishgarh and Rishikesh in Uttarkhand. In 2014, another six locations covered were Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, Kalayni in West Bengal, Mangalagiri in Andhra Pradesh, Nagpur in Maharashtra and Madurai in Tamil Nadu.