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October 2012

Readying quacks

By Tarunkumar Singhal, Raman Jokhakar
Chartered Accountants
Reading Time 1 mins
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Sometimes, the Indian state demonstrates a naive belief in numbers that obscures the real issues. Take healthcare; by the government’s own reckoning, the country’s doctor-patient ratio should be around 1:1,000. Currently, it is 1:2,000. That’s the kind of problem the government thinks it understands.

Health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad informed the Rajya Sabha about the steps taken to counter this situation. Among other things, the government has relaxed norms for establishing new medical colleges in terms of faculty, land and other infrastructure. It has also relaxed the student/teacher ratio in postgraduate classes and raised the intake capacity at the undergraduate level from 150 to 250. The result will be more doctors, but given the dilution on various counts, it could very well mean poor-quality ones. This is inadequate medicine for an already sick healthcare system.

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