Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Mansukh Mandaviya on Saturday announced that he aims to level UG and PG seats in medical education in the coming four years. “Eight years ago, India had only 51,000 seats for MBBS, today the number of seats has increased to 1,02,026. Earlier there were 34,000 PG seats, and now the number has gone up to 64,000. I have set the target to level UG and PG seats in the next four years so that all our doctors get the opportunity to pursue post graduation,” said the minister. Mandaviya was addressing the 13th Annual Conference of the Global Association of Physicians of Indian Origin in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. He also said that medical colleges can assess for themselves if they will receive approval in the future or not. “We want our doctors to get the best medical education. Today, all the medical colleges in the country are being managed by the Command and Control Centre. Through AI, we are monitoring every medical college — the number of patients in a day, the infrastructure, number of OPDs, number of operations, we are monitoring everything. Medical colleges themselves can assess whether the number of seats in their college will be increased or not, whether they will get approval or not.” Mandaviya also invited healthcare professionals from the Indian diaspora to invest in research and open hospital chains in the country with "assured business." More than 70 countries will sign hospital-to-hospital, country-to-country and country-to-hospital MoUs at the 'Heal In India, Heal By India' expo to be held in April-May this year, he said.
