'Medical colleges in country distributed in skewed manner'

Concerned that some states are facing severe shortage of doctors, a Parliamentary Committee has recommended that an institutional mechanism should be put in place to ensure more even distribution of medical colleges in the country.
"Nearly 65 per cent medical colleges are concentrated in the southern and western states whereas states in north, north-east and central India have a severe shortage of doctors because of fewer number of medical colleges there," the Committee said in its recent report submitted in Rajya Sabha.
State level doctor-population ratio should guide the setting up of medical colleges, it added.
The Committee also noted that six states with 31 per cent of India's population account for 58 per cent of the MBBS seats, while eight states which comprise 46 per cent of population have 21 per cent of the MBBS seats.

"We are concerned to note that the medical colleges in the country are distributed in a skewed manner and merely increasing the medical seats to enable correction of this doctor-population imbalance will not automatically address this skew.
"Experience shows that doctors normally settle in the cities they go for their medical education and do not return to serve in their own urban or rural areas," it said in the report.
The Committee has observed that the Medical Council of India (MCI) has been "unresponsive" to health system needs resulting in shortage of number of doctors and uneven distribution of medical colleges across the country.

It recommended that urgent measures to spell out policy stance in great detail and to augment the capacity of production of doctors, including specialists and super specialists at the scale, be taken, the report said.