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Union Health Minister J P Nadda has said that 22 new AIIMS are coming up across the country under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Surakhya Yojana to reduce the regional imbalance in the healthcare and tertiary fields. Addressing the first convocation of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), he also said that ensuring the highest standards of medical education was a top priority for the government.
Admitting that there was a shortage of skilled human resources in the health sector at all levels, Nadda said that the Centre has planned for a rapid expansion of medical education. The minister stressed that the quality of health care in the country would depend on the quality of students produced by the medical education system.
Nadda further stated that many initiatives such as increasing the retirement age of doctors to 65 years, setting up of more medical and nursing schools, multi-skilling of doctors to overcome the shortage of specialists, have been taken by the government to improve medical education.
The health minister said, “We are expanding the network of our medical colleges in a big way by upgrading 58 district hospitals to medical colleges. Twenty-four new medical colleges have been announced in this year's budget. Twenty state cancer institutes and 50 tertiary cancer care centres are also being set up.”
The government’s plan to set up more medical education institutes will increase the supply of doctors, thereby helping the country to meet the rising healthcare demands of citizens.
