Rural medical facilities
ONE is tempted to endorse the optimism of everyone getting affordable and quality healthcare that is implied in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s declaration that India will in a few years get many more doctors as the government is committed to establishing a medical college in every district and making education accessible to all. But the painful experience on the ground compels one to have reservations. For, besides producing more medical professionals to improve the doctor-population ratio, especially in the countryside, equally imperative for India is to simultaneously ensure that doctors emerging from the government medical colleges — that provide education for a pittance compared to the cost entailed — mandatorily serve in rural areas for a minimum prescribed period.
Past efforts in this regard have proved to be woefully inadequate in various states. The huge number of cases of MBBS and PG doctors first receiving government-sector education and then dishonouring the bond that ties them to compulsory service in government hospitals and opting for the lucrative private sector signifies the loopholes in the contract. The National Medical Commission should prescribe a strictly implementable scheme of an equitable distribution of resources for the benefit of the people, especially the poor and residents of small towns and villages.
The massively disproportionate concentration of doctors and specialists in urban areas adds to the woes of the ailing masses. Almost every other patient today is vying for care and attention at a select few hospitals in big cities, overburdening the doctors. It is a fertile ground for malpractices. On the other hand, facilities in remote areas lack in both manpower and infrastructural resources. The Tribune report from Ludhiana reflects the general apathy: the budget for medicines in Punjab’s rural dispensaries — catering to two-three villages — was last revised 16 years ago. That even a decade after the six AIIMS centres came up outside Delhi, 29-55 per cent of the faculty positions remain vacant best underlines the gross mismatch between the governments’ measures for expanding medical facilities and ensuring doctors’ services optimally.
