The Centre will introduce a scheme to strengthen and upgrade state government-run medical colleges, generating 4,000 additional post graduate seats in 2011-12 academic year, Union Health Minister Gulam Nabi Azad said today 22.03.2010.

This, along with increase in seats in private colleges, would lead to 10,000 additional PG seats in next two years, he said in his address at the convocation of Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) here.

Under the scheme, for which a financial allocation of Rs 1,350 crore had been made, the colleges would be provided financial assistance so as to increase the PG seats and start new PG courses. I expect 4,000 more PG seats would be available in the next academic session (2011-12), he said.

Listing various steps taken to bridge the gap in the doctor-population ratio, he said the government had rationalised the teacher-student ratio from 1:1 to 1:2 in PG medical education. This step alone had led to creation of additional 2,800 PG seats in various government medical colleges in the 2010-11 academic year, Azad said.

He urged the young medical graduates to volunteer themselves "to serve in difficult, most difficult and inaccessible (rural) areas" as a vast majority of people were still deprived of proper medical attention.

"We all owe our service to the rural India which has been the backbone of our agriculture, environment, culture and ethos," he said, adding the government had initiated major reforms to provide better incentives to get the best health professionals where they were needed.

Source: PTI