India's Healthcare Industry Faces Serious Challenges

NEW DELHI, June 30 (Bernama) – India’s health-care industry faces serious challenge with poor health indicators, high mortality rates, scarcity of doctors and nurses as well as perception of deteriorating quality of medical education, Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh said. “We face serious challenges in assuring the health and well-being of our people. Our health indicators continue to be poor and high mortality rates of infants and pregnant women have been a cause of serious concern,” he said. The scarcity of doctors, nurses, health workers, public health professionals is emerging as one of the most important impediments to providing universal health coverage for all, he said at in his address at the third Convocation in Jawaharlal Institute of Post graduate Medical Education and Research on Saturday in Puducherry. This shortage is acute in our rural areas and in particular, in the northern, central and eastern regions of the country. “Against a desirable rate of 1 doctor per 1,000 population we have one doctor per 2,000 people. Against a norm of 3 nurses per doctor, we have 3 nurses for every 2 doctors.” The centre and the state governments, particularly state governments of the under-served regions, need to put their heads together, prepare strategies and implement urgent measures to remedy the situation, he said. The quality of medical education is another concern, he said, adding that there is a perception of deteriorating quality. “We cannot allow this situation to continue or to persist. We must put in place a credible regulatory and institutional mechanism to help develop standards in our medical education.” The need to be a serious re-look at the curriculum for medical education so that doctors are trained to look at health in a truly holistic manner, and that it goes beyond a narrow clinical and technology-driven approach. “Students training to be doctors have to be prepared to work with local communities and in our villages. They should be sensitised to the social determinants of health and be as willing to contribute to preventive healthcare and its management as the more lucrative curative systems.” As science and society evolve rapidly in the 21st century, the education of health professionals too must be transformed in precept and practice. Interdisciplinary learning and health system connectivity should, therefore, become the hallmarks of contemporary medical education, he stressed. -- BERNAMA