The government will set up more medical colleges under the existing hospital infrastructure to accommodate more students in the highly competitive MBBS stream, said finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman during the Interim Budget 2024 on Thursday.
“Several youths are ambitious to get qualified as doctors. They aim to serve our people through improved healthcare services,” she pointed out.
A committee will be set up to look into the issues regarding the MBBS seats, she added.
An official from the National Medical Commission (NMC), which regulates medical education in India, said it has already started allowing small government hospitals to run medical colleges.
“Earlier, hospitals with 400 to 600 beds were allowed to open medical colleges. The calculation was that for every four beds, the hospital can teach one medical student. However, the new rules allow 200 bedded government hospitals to run PG medical colleges or medical institutes,” said the official.
“Soon, the feasibility study will be conducted and impact evaluation will be done to understand if the experiment is going well,” the official added.
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Two senior officials from the NMC told News18 that so far it has not been asked to constitute any committee. Both officials believe that the decision announced by Sitharaman is in the “right direction”.
The idea is to provide opportunities to medical students at a faster pace, and make use of the available resources at hospitals for education apart from public services, the officials added.
“We have realised that hospitals have almost everything including the laboratories and departments to teach students. There could be space crunch in terms of lecture halls but those requirements could be taken care of,” one of the two officials said.
At present, India has a total number of 706 medical colleges with an intake capacity of 1,08,848 MBBS seats.
When asked about the Central government’s target of setting up more medical colleges, the official stressed the proposal hinges on demand and market needs. “The need to establish more medical colleges is determined by the size of the market for medical education and the demand from students,” the official said.
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