Bangalore: To address shortage of medical manpower in rural areas, the Centre is planning to start a Bachelor of Rural Health Course, Union Minister for Health Gulab Nabi Azad said on Wednesday.
"A group of 25 students from notified rural areas will undergo training for three and half years in district hospitals and taught by serving/retired professors. They will be obligated to serve mostly in sub-centres and if need be in primary health centres," he said, addressing 14th convocation at National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Science (NIMHANS) here.
Currently doctors, specialists and super specialists handled primary health centres, but five to six sub-centres which came under a primary health centre were facing shortage of doctors, he said.
"They were often manned by junior nurses who addressed issues relating to family planning and could not take care other medical needs. This shortage could be addressed by training rural youths in this field," he said.
The medical schools at district level would select students from rural areas and minimum education qualification needed is 10 plus two with chemistry, zoology, botany as subjects.
The education programme in no way would lack in quality in comparison to MBBS. The theory would be same but practical would be far less as these doctors would not be engaged largely in performing surgeries, he said.
According to conservative estimates, India was short of about 8000 psychiatrist, 17,000 clinical psychologists, 23,000 psychiatric social workers and 9,000 psychiatric nurses. Today less than one psychiatrist is available per lack population, Azad said.
Similarly, to address shortfall in nursing, the ministry had approved a scheme to open more than 250 nursing schools in backward, unserved districts to train 22,000 nurses annually, Azad said.
Currently, the availability of PG training seats were approximately 350 for psychiatry, 120 for clinical psychology, 25 for psychiatric social workers and 9000 psychiatric nurses, he said.
Keeping in view of the huge demand-supply gap, the Health Ministry had taken up the issue and for the first time more than Rs 400 crore has been approved for manpower development schemes under the National Health Programme, he said.
"Under this scheme we propose to establish 11 centres of excellence in the field of mental health, for producing more trained manpower in psychiatry, clinical psychology, psychiatric social work and psychiatric nursing, he said.
An amount of Rs 30 crore will be made available for each centre of excellence.
The ministry was also supporting medical colleges and mental hospitals to start and augment PG courses in mental health specialities. A total of 120 departments would be supported. This scheme would generate 1140 mental health professions annually, he said.
PTI
