Brain drain
767 docs flew out till July 27

NEW DELHI: Brain drain continues to cripple India's medical sector. According to the Medical Council of India (MCI), till July 27, 2011, as many as 767 doctors may have left India for foreign shores.

These are all doctors who asked the MCI to issue them Good Standing Certificates (GSC) - a mandatory requirement for doctors going to work in hospitals abroad. The MCI issued 1,264 GSCs in 2010, 1,386 GSCs in 2009 and 1,002 in 2008.

Health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "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."

Prof Ranjit Roychoudhury, former member of MCI's board of governors, told TOI, "A GSC is mandatory for all doctors going abroad for clinical work. A GSC is required once a person has got an offer to work in a foreign hospital."

Prof Roychoudhury added, "It is not for doctors changing jobs within India. For such people, the new employers just check with the MCI to see if he is a registered doctor and that his name has not been struck out. That's all."

According to the health ministry, such a large number of doctors going abroad to work is bad news for India. The country has just one doctor for every 1,700 people. In comparison, the doctor-population ratio globally is 1.5:1,000. Somalia has one doctor for 10,000 population. China's doctor population ratio stands at 1:1063, Korea 1:951, Brazil 1:844, Singapore 1:714, Japan 1:606, Thailand 1:500, UK 1:469, US 1:350 and Germany 1:296.

MCI is now trying to reduce the gap to 1 doctor for 1,000 population by 2031. According to the Planning Commission, India is short of six lakh doctors, 10 lakh nurses and two lakh dental surgeons. The commission estimates that Indian doctors who have migrated to developed countries form nearly 5% of their medical workforce. Almost 60,000 Indian physicians are estimated to be working in countries like US, UK, Canada and Australia alone.

A recent paper in the Lancet said India had eight healthcare workers, 3.8 allopathic doctors and 2.4 nurses per 10,000 population. When compared to other countries, this is about half the WHO benchmark of 25.4 workers per 10,000 people.

According to MCI's Indian Medical Register that was last updated in April 2011, the nation supposedly boasts of 840,678 registered medical practitioners. However, the data includes names of doctors who were registered way back in 1933. Chances of these doctors being alive is dim, admits MCI.

India, meanwhile, is all set to produce over 4,400 more doctors every year. The MCI, looking at India's medical manpower shortage, has increased the number of seats for undergraduate medical education by 4,452 from this academic session (2011-12).