ALL MEDICAL COLLEGES MUST HAVE PG COURSES IN 3 YEARS: GOVT

NEW DELHI: To meet the severe shortage of specialist doctors in India, all existing medical colleges will have to start post-graduate (PG) courses from the 2020-21 academic year, and new ones within three years of receiving recognition to run undergraduate (UG) courses.

The move is expected to add around 10,000 post-graduate seats over the next four years.

Colleges that fail to do this will lose their recognition. The norms are part of the ministry of health and family welfare’s amendments to the Medical Council of India’s (MCI) post-graduate medical education regulations (PGMER) 2000 that will be notified on Thursday.

India has about 38,000 postgraduate seats for about 68,000 MBBS graduates who come out of medical college every year.

The regulations will apply to both private and government medical colleges.

“There are several medical colleges running only undergraduate courses and wasting valuable resources. It is more prudent to make use of the existing infrastructure than invest in building expensive new colleges,” said a senior health ministry official on condition of anonymity.

According to the health ministry’s estimates, it costs up to ₹4 crore to create a seat in a new medical college, while it costs just about ₹1.2 crore to do so in an existing institute.