[Answered] Indian medical education system needs to be strengthened to make it more meaningful and beneficial for Indian students. Analyzing structural and practical limitations of Indian medical education system, suggest remedial measures.

India deals with serious shortage of medical hands in the country which is a major impediment for achieving the health-related Sustainable Development Goals. Fixing the problems in the medical industry is crucial to the health and well-being of a country.

Some of the major limitations in Indian medical education system are mentioned as below:  

• Availability of seats: The number of medical colleges in India are way too less than required. For example, only 89,875 out of 1.6 million students who appeared in NEET-2021, were selected for 596 medical colleges in the country.
• Staff Shortage: India is also lacking in providing adequate quality faculty, which will be a hinderance in case number of seats are increased.
• Problems with private medical colleges: Fees structure in the private medical colleges is not affordable leading to disparities in the system. .
• Poor Quality of colleges: There has been mushrooming of poor quality colleges which lack proper infrastructure — land, laboratories, equipment, and trained faculty at the postgraduate level.
• Lack of Digital learning: Methods of education are still not updated with advances in e-learning including digital dissections and remote learning.

Remedial Measures to strengthen medical education in India

In order to effectively address these challenges, our health systems must be strengthened. Some of the suggested remedial measures are mentioned below

• Government should increase the healthcare spending to 2.5% of the GDP as envisaged by Economic Survey 2020-21.
• It is essential to increase the number of medical colleges, especially in states that have a low number of seats with MBBS Courses, classrooms and laboratories needed. It can bring in uniformity of access across states and fill the demand-supply gap
• Common classrooms must be created by virtually linking medical colleges with more prevalent use of technology to share some of the faculty where there is considerable faculty shortage.
• State governments must financially assist in transformation of district hospitals with added nursing colleges and allied health professional training centers to create a multi-layered, multi-skilled health workforce. For instance, a centrally sponsored scheme aims to set up 157 new medical colleges attached to existing district hospitals in areas that do not have any medical colleges.
• Pushing for reforms like Restructuring medical licensing systems, ranking medical colleges, and standardizing entry requirements at medical schools across the country are all essential reforms under the NMC.

Flight of students for medical education to foreign countries is resulting into loss of manpower and revenue. Country must come out with a solution so those students can boost and strengthen the much-required health system.