expert corner
MEDICAL EDUCATION- LET’S TALK
ABOUT UNDERLYING TRUTH
We often don’t speak about medical education and its role in nation-building in the way
it should be, writes Dr Dharminder Nagar, Managing Director, Paras Healthcare
In 2014, when during the
government’s first health budget,
slogans like “Health for All” and
“Health Assurance” were spoken
about, with great promise.
However, over the past three
years, the allocation to the health
sector, as a part of the GDP has
hovered around a little over 1
percent. The aim should be to
raise this to the level that the
draft health policy has set out for
us: to 2.5 percent of the GDP.
With the private sector coming
in, as it has in a big way over the
last decade, this takes the
percentage investment to 4
24
BioVoiceNews | September 2016
percent of the GDP.
How this translates
Low investment means that at the
very base, we do not have enough
medical colleges to train doctors,
nurses and support staff. Down
the line then, we have only 0.7
doctors for every 1,000 patients.
The World Health Organization
guidelines stipulate that there
must be at least 1 doctor per
1,000. The other problem that we
encounter is the urban-rural
imbalance. We don’t need data to
tell us to tell us what is happening
in rural India. Almost all care is
happening at the primary level,
with midwives and healthcare
workers as the first point of
contact with the community. They
are no doubt doing the best
possible job they can, but
naturally, we need more doctors
on ground, not just at a single
primary healthcare centre where
people come.
The need of the hour
We need doctors who understand
the cultural context in which they
are working, doctors who wish to
give back to the communities that
nurtured them. How do we get