In a country where just seven doctors are available for every 10,000 people and a meager 8,350 critical specialists against required 50,000, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement for increasing the retirement age of doctors from 60/62 years to 65 years will go a long way in ensuring better healthcare of patients particularly in rural areas, say experts.
As per the World Health Organisation, there is only one doctor per 1,700 citizens in India against the WHO stipulated 1:1,000 ratio. Aware of the huge shortage of doctors, the Prime Minister, in a rally in Sharanpur in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday, announced that the Union Cabinet will soon take the decision to increase the retirement age of doctors to 65 years. At present, doctors retire at 60 years in some States and 62 years in some others.
As per the Health Ministry data, as of March 31, 2015, more than 8 per cent of 25,300 primary health centres in the country are without a doctor, 38 per cent without a laboratory technician, and 22 per cent had no pharmacist. Nearly 50 per cent of posts for female health assistants and 61 per cent for male health assistants remain vacant.
In community health centres, the vacancy figure is grimmer — surgeons (83 per cent), obstetricians and gynaecologists (76 per cent), physicians (83 per cent), and paediatricians (82 per cent). Even in health facilities where doctors, specialists, and paramedic staff have been posted, their availability remains in question because of high rates of absenteeism, as per the NATHEAlTH.
While the Ministry figures claim that there are about 6-6.5 lakh doctors available, India would need about four lakh more by 2020 — 50,000 for PHCs; 0.8 lakh for community health centres (CHC); 1.1 lakh for 5,642 sub-centres and another 0.5 lakh for medical college hospitals.
This severe shortage of public sector doctors is leading to ever-increasing personal expenditures on health, and impoverishing 3.3 per cent of India’s population every year.
There has been also suggestion for increasing medical colleges and improving medical education to ensure quality doctors. Presently, there are more than 410 Government and private medical schools having an annual intake of 50,000 students for MBBS courses.
Decision to increase the retirement age is also likely to meet the faculty need of the AIIMS like institutes which are coming in a big way across the country with an aim to reach out to the poor patients.
Welcoming the move, Dr SS Agarwal, National president, IMA and Dr KK Aggarwal Secretary General, IMA say in a statement that it was the need of the hour. “It will help reducing shortage of doctors in the country especially in the rural areas. In medical colleges the retirement age has already been increased to seventy years,” they say.
Delhi Medical Association Secretary General Ashwani Goyal echoes similar views saying given the dearth of doctors in the healthcare system, the increased retirement age will ensure many doctors to continue serve their patients for a longer period. “This will help particularly in the rural areas where young doctors are not showing interest to go. We are glad that our long pending demand has been met,” he says.
Though welcoming the move, Dr Vivekananad Jha from George Institute calls it as a “really only a band-aid solution as the rest of the infrastructure related issues and workforce such as paramedic staff is not addressed.”
He cautions that in fact, this might push younger doctors to go to private sector if they do not see promotion opportunity.
“It does not increase the total number of doctors unless new jobs are advertised and filled in a timely manner. Moreover, if older doctors retain administrative control for long it would deprive younger ones of opportunity and thus it would breed discontent,” he adds.
Moreover, Dr Jha points out that unless older doctors keep updating themselves (usually does not happen) new knowledge does not get into the system.