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Indian doctors seek work in foreign lands
While India faces an acute shortage of trained medical manpower, as many as 1,333 doctors migrated to foreign shores, many to Canada, over the last one year.
During the same period, the previous year - from April 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011 - 1,157 doctors had migrated in search of employment, and between 2009 and 2010, 1,458 doctors went abroad.
This latest revelation by indian health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad comes just days after he had said that doctors going to the US for higher medical studies will now have to sign a bond with the ministry before leaving and honour the document by returning home after finishing the study period.
"Now, if a student does not come back from the US, he won't be allowed to practice there," Azad had said.
The US has insisted on a government No objection Certificate (NoC) from this academic session from every student enrolling with an American institute.
Azad said, "These are all doctors who asked the Medical Council of India (MCI) to issue them Good Standing Certificates (GSC) - a mandatory requirement for doctors going to work in hospitals abroad. GSCs give us a rough estimate of the doctors migrating to other countries. However, it does not reflect the absolute number. No centralized data is maintained for doctors and nurses migrating to other countries."
Azad said over 3,000 doctors went abroad for studies and did not return in the last three years.
He added, "Those who apply to go to the US for studies from 2012 will have to give us a bond saying they would come back after finishing the studies. If they don't fulfill the bond obligation, we can write to the US to deny the student permission to practice."
Almost 70% of health workers in India are presently employed in the private sector.
Almost 18% of primary health centres in the public sector are without a doctor, 38% are without a laboratory technician and 16% are without a pharmacist. Immigration is a big threat to India.
Indian doctors emigrating to the West constitute the largest number of foreign trained physicians in the USA (4•9%) and the UK (10.9%), the second largest in Australia (4%) and third largest in Canada (2.1%).
About 100,000 Indian doctors work in the US and the UK ministry officials say at the time of Independence, India had 19 medical schools, from which 1,200 doctors graduated every year.
Now, India has 270 medical schools, from which 28,158 doctors graduate annually.
The southwestern states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu (which together account for 31% of the country's population) account for 58% of all medical colleges (public and private) in India.
According to the ministry, doctors going abroad to work doesn't augur well for the country. The nation has just one doctor for every 1,700 people. In comparison, the doctor-population ratio globally is 1.5:1,000.
Almost 60,000 Indian physicians are estimated to be working in countries like the US, the UK, Canada and Australia alone.
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