How Can India Be A Better Platform for Healthcare Workers?

India has been facing a severe health workforce crisis as the doctor-patient ratio in India is reportedly less than the WHO-prescribed limit of 1:1000. On an average, a government doctor in India attends to approximately more than 11,082 people per month, which is supposedly more than 10 times than what the WHO recommends. The shortage of government doctors has resulted a lot of severities claiming the lives of many patients. After the pandemic the scarcity of doctors was heavily witnessed which compelled all of us think about making India a better platform for healthcare workers.

1. Scarcity of Competent Teaching Faculties

Although the deficiency of doctors was implicit post-independence, it endures to plague the healthcare system even today. While the number of Medical Science institutes have been increasing in the country, there is a shortage of trained teaching faculty who can provide better education and training to the future healthcare workers. Govt. can take initiatives to increase the number of seats in the existing medical colleges which can consistently help to meet the growing demands of skilled doctors in the country. But concurrently, we also need to a pool of qualified faculties for not only ensuring the seamless functioning of the existing medical colleges but can also play an important role in providing quality medical education. Many of the faculties prefer to take up corporate jobs or fly abroad for well-paid assignments which often leads to brain drain. Unless innovative incentives such as ensuring attractive pay packages along with proper technology-enabled healthcare facilities are offered, specialist doctors will not move to the remote areas for working.

2. Increasing MBBS Seats for Better Admission Opportunities
If the number of medical seats will be increased then it will definitely lead to more opportunities for the medical aspirants who are trying hard to get admission into govt. medical colleges. Currently, the doctor-patient ratio in India is very much disturbing with approximately 1:1700 ratio which is much less than the recommended 1:1000 ratio. While India has always been facing the shortage of health workers, the COVID pandemic has highlighted this severe reality to a much greater degree. While the medical profession is considered to be a prestigious profession which requires a rigorous amount of investment from students in terms of time as well as money, it is also a highly demanding stream as compared to other streams of education owing to the challenges faced by them. In India, it is quite common to witness many medical aspirants to give up if they don’t succeed after attempting the exams few times. In such scenarios, an increase in the number of seats will help enhance their chances of admission.

3. Increase in PG Seats
Even if more seats at the UG level would ensure more doctors entering into the healthcare profession. However, the shortage continues as the seats get lesser while moving ahead in the hierarchical level. The country has been facing a serious dearth of specialised doctors who could actually concentrate more treatment and healthcare facilities to the concerned patients. The competition for the PG seats also continues to surge because the pyramid gets narrower as we go up. While this can be a discouraging factor for the students from becoming a medical professional in future, the government also does not promote the doctors who want to carry on this profession. Taking COVID-19 into consideration, the healthcare system has already been struggling with the shortage of medical professionals, para medics and infrastructure for which the only solution lies in enhancing the number of UG and PG seats.

4. Uneven Distribution of doctors
Looking into the problem from a different perspective, simply enhancing the seats will only solve few portions of the problem, more important aspects lies in addressing the infrastructures of the medical colleges, eminence of workforce, healthcare delivery in India will fall short of expectations. There should also be an importance on the dispersal of the doctors, which is currently uneven in the rural and urban areas. Most of the health workers prefer to stay in urban areas than rural areas where they can avail better facilities. The scarcity and differences are often due to the reluctance of doctors to work in the less developed areas where function and operating is much harder. Since the rural population in India consists of more than 63% of the total population, with more than 290 rural districts, proper benefits and reformed schemes should be introduced for doctors to operate in the rural settings.