14/05/2021 - Education

KEY POINTS

·        The serious shortage of health workers, especially doctors, in some northern States is a major impediment for achieving the health-related Sustainable Development Goals.

·        Health workers are critical not just for the functioning of health systems but also for the preparedness of health systems in preventing, detecting and responding to threats posed by diseases such as COVID-19.

·        The doctor-population ratio in northern States is far short of the required norm, while the southern States, barring Telangana, have enough doctors in possession.

·        There is no denying that in order to meet the significant shortfall of qualified doctors in northern States, scaling up of medical education is warranted.

·        Through the implementation of such a policy, the private sector in medical education will be encouraged; it will also directly aid the corporatisation processes of healthcare provisioning while the under-resourced public health system will be a collateral damage.

·        The corporatisation will make the services very costly and exclude them from getting care.

·        Thus, it would shut the door on a large number of medical aspirants who would otherwise have a strong motivation to work in rural areas but do not have the means to finance themselves.

·        Solving doctor shortage, therefore, needs long-term thinking and commitment from the political leadership.

·        Medical education is a public good as its purpose is to improve the population health and decrease disease burden.

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