With focus on healthcare,state to add more medical colleges

“We hope five new medical colleges shall go on stream next year adding 700 medical seats in the state,followed by four more in the year thereafter,” Vyas said.

Apart from this,three more medical colleges are likely to become operational by 2012,he said. Vyas said the corporate sector would be a major feeder to the growth in the healthcare,which is growing rapidly. The minister said the allocation to the health sector would be hiked from three per cent to six in the next budget.

Health Commissioner Vijaylaxmi Joshi said the healthcare outlay has risen to Rs 1,900 crore in this fiscal,a 58 per cent jump over the last year’s allocation. Over the next few years,medical colleges would be churning out over 3,500 doctors annually against the present figure of 2055.

Speaking on the occasion,prof Dileep Mavalankar of the Centre of Management in Health Sciences,IIM-A,said the talatis at the local village administration often fail to state cause for deaths in their areas — on an average,eight people die in a village every year — making it difficult to determine health issues in a given area.

Indian Institute of Public Health’s director Dr Jay Satia said so far as the patient-doctor ratio is concerned,Tamil Nadu fares better than Gujarat. He said AYUSH doctors and nurses cannot be neglected in skill enhancement as they cover more patients in the rural setup than allopathic practitioners.