In a move that will eventually reduce shortage of doctors in the country, the Union health ministry has decided to relax norms for establishing colleges in the country.
According to the new notification expected to be issued next week by the Medical Council of India (MCI), the earlier land requirement of 20 acres has been brought down to 10 acre plot for several states with poor health indicators like Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Jharkhand. Infact, it has been decided that these places could have split campuses-hospital and medical college within 10 km of each other.
“The only condition is that hospital should be running for three years,” said a senior official in the ministry.
As of now the medical colleges should be housed in a unitary campus of not less than 20 acres of land except in mega cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, New Delhi and Chennai and “a” class cities like Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Pune, Bengaluru and Kanpur.
In the earlier notification of last year, the ministry had relaxed the norms for urban areas where the population is more than 25 lakh other than these cities, hilly areas, notified tribal areas, north-eastern states and Union Territories of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Lakshwadeep-where the land shall not be in more than two pieces and the distance between the two pieces shall not be more than 10 kms.
The MCI had notified that the hospital, college, building including hostels for the interns, PGs, residents and nurses shall be in one piece of land which shall not be less than 10 acres. “other facilities may be housed in other piece of land.