10,000 more PG medical seats to be available in two years:Azad

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.

Azad also said a Rural Health cadre was being set up to address the needs of health care in rural areas. He said new auxiliary nurse midwife and general nurse midwife schools would be set up in the backward and under-served districts in the country.

Highlighting the initiatives his ministry had taken during the last eight months to increase the medical seats,Azad said land requirement for opening new medical colleges had been brought down from 25 acres to 20 acres across the country.

In case of major cities where the land was scarce,it had been brought down to ten acres and medical colleges could be opened in multi-storied buildings instead on horizontal pattern.

This was the first convocation in JIPMER after it was delinked from Union Health Ministry and became an autonomous institution and declared an institute of national importance through a central act in 2008.

JIPMER Management Committee President Dr N K Ganguly gave away the degree certificates at the function also attended by Union Minister of State for Planning V Narayanasamy,Puducherry Chief Minister V Vaithilingam.