Why our villages need many more doctors

Shortage of personnel is the big challenge facing our primary healthcare system

Last year, nine-year-old schoolboy Ansh died on his father’s shoulders when the emergency section of a Kanpur hospital denied him admission. A few days after that, when district hospital authorities in Odisha’s tribal Kalahandi district refused to arrange for a hearse, Dana Majhi was compelled to carry his wife’s body on his shoulders for 10 kilometres. These shameful incidents point to the gaps in our shambolic public healthcare system. We have just one government doctor for every 10,189 people, one government hospital bed for every 2,046 people and one state-run hospital for every 90,343 people. The shortage of doctors is one of the biggest ailments afflicting our health-management system. A 2017 study by the economics and business policy faculty at the FORE School of Management says India needs 2.07 million more doctors by 2030 to achieve a doctor-to-population ratio of 1:1,000.

Clearly there is a discrepancy between the State’s national healthcare plans and ground realities. As a part of the National Health Mission, among the ambitious goals set by the Centre is to reduce the infant mortality rate to 30 per 1,000 live births, from the current estimate of 40. This will involve the setting up of medical and nursing resources close to villages. India’s 462 medical colleges teach 56,748 doctors, but with our population increasing by 26 million every year, this is inadequate. With health being a state subject, the buck finally stops with the local government. The workable remedy perhaps lies in quality training for informal healthcare workers and freeing up doctors from too many administrative responsibilities at the district level to help them focus on treating patients in villages.