Almost one-third (31 per cent) of those who claimed to be allopathic doctors in 2001 were educated only up to the secondary school level and 57 per cent did not have any medical qualification, a recent WHO report found, ringing the alarm bells on India’s healthcare workforce.
The situation was far worse in rural India, where just 18.8 per cent of allopathic doctors had a medical qualification, the study titled ‘The Health Workforce in India’, published in June 2016, revealed.
The data for each district in the country from the 2001 census were specially extracted for this study, which provided a comprehensive picture of health workers in each district.
Researchers hoped that a similar study was repeated with data from Census 2011, which was not yet available.
Ignoring those who don’t have a medical qualification, the number for India fell to 36 doctors per lakh population. As for nurses and midwives, India had 61 workers per lakh population compared to 96 in China. The number reduced tenfold to 6 per lakh population, if only those with a medical qualification were considered.
The density of allopathic doctors with any level of education in the lowest 30 districts — half of which were in north-eastern States and the other in central States — was a little over 9.4 per lakh of the population whereas, in the highest 30 districts, it was 159 per lakh of population, it said.
In the case of dentists, the situation was even worse. The national density of dentists was extremely low at 2.4 per lakh population, with 58 (of the total 593) districts having no dentists at all in 2001. In fact, 175 districts (30 per cent) had no dentists with a medical qualification.
There have been no attempts on the part of the government to curb quackery, said Dr. A.V. Jayakrishnan, Chairman of the Standing Committee on Anti-Quackery set up by the Indian Medical Association.
“Laws and regulations are so weak that even if the frauds are caught and arrested, they get bail on the following day and start practising again,” he told this reporter.
@Agency report.
