938,861 allopathic doctors in India

India has a total of 938,861 allopathic doctors, 736,538 Ayush (ayurvedic, yunani, siddhi and homeopathy) doctors and 256,6067 nurses, as per a new report of the health ministry released on Tuesday.

In addition to this, the National Health Profile 2015 says the country had 154,436 dental surgeons registered upto 2014 and 664,176 pharmacists as on June last year.

In the government sector in rural areas, 27,355 doctors were registered out of which 4,091 were specialists.

There were 10,358 male health assistants and 13,643 female health assistants, while the number of multipurpose health workers was 55,445 (male) and 217,780 (female).

Maharashtra had the highest number of registered doctors at 148,575 closely followed by Tamil Nadu at 102,328 while Arunachal Pradesh had the least at 510.

The report by the Central Bureau of Health Intelligence (CBHI) said that there has been an increase in the availability of allopathic medical practitioners, dental surgeons and nurses per lakh population over the years.

As far as rural areas were concerned, Andhra Pradesh had the highest number of doctors at the Public Health Centres (3,118). The capital Delhi had only 20 doctors available at PHCs.

The report mentioned that medical education infrastructure has shown rapid growth during the last 20 years, with the country having 398 medical colleges, 305 dental colleges (bachelor degree level) and 224 dental colleges (masters degree level).

India has 2,865 institutions producing 115,484 general nurse midwives annually and 723 colleges for pharmacy with an intake capacity of 43,300 as on December 2014.

There are 20,306 hospitals having 675,779 beds in the country, 16,816 out of these are in rural areas and and 3,490 hospitals are in urban areas.