The government has now made it more difficult for doctors to go to America for higher medical studies. It makes perfect sense when the country is suffering from a poor doctor-patient ratio: just one doctor for 1,700 people. Around 60,000 Indian doctors now work in just four nations — the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia — comprising around five per cent of their doctor strength.
It’s time we began to keep our medical students at home.
It’s true doctors may see a critical need to acquire specialised skills not easily available in this country, but this can’t be allowed at the expense of a country that spends so much in training them at the undergraduate level. It is India’s aim to have at least one doctor for every 1,000 people in about 20 years. To achieve that goal, much has to be done: we have to add to the 330 medical colleges in India, and attract more doctors to serve our people.
While the estimated national shortage is around 600,000 doctors and 200,000 dental surgeons, last year alone 3,000 doctors who went abroad for training did not return. Given such a yawning gap in the doctor-people ratio, every step must be taken to retain talent to tend to our
population.
Whether a Rs 5-lakh bond and a few sureties are sufficient to stop the brain drain is debatable, given what medical students are prepared to spend on capitation fees. There are, however, limited options to try keep the brightest doctors in India.