Associate Professor, Economics and Business Policy, FORE School of Management, New Delhi, India.
Indian J Public Health. 2017 Jul-Sep;61(3):182-187. doi: 10.4103/ijph.IJPH_143_16.
The current belief of availability of doctors in India is based on the registration stock of doctors accumulated since the early 20th century. This has not been adjusted to attrition of the strength occurring due to retirement, emigration, etc.
To estimate the number of practicing doctors currently available in India and will be available in 2030 after adjustments made for attrition of the stock.
The paper used Medical Council of India's historical data (1960-2015) on registration stock of doctors obtained from the Indian medical registers available on its website and other data on emigration of doctors accessed from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and destination country sources.
The paper found that there were only 4.8 practicing doctors per 10,000 population available in India in 2014, in contrast to the belief of having 7 doctors per 10,000 people. Rest of the registered doctors have either retired or emigrated from the country to practice abroad. It is estimated that the country would be able to achieve a ratio of about 6.9 practicing doctors per 10,000 people only by 2030.
Given these findings of the current availability of doctors per 10,000 people and their growth prospects over the next 15-year period, it looks like an impossible task to achieve even a moderate doctor-population ratio of 1:1000 by 2030. Therefore, a genuine commitment to provide equitable healthcare to the rural population must innovate and experiment a special cadre of practitioners for rural areas on a pan-India basis.
目前印度医生可获得性的观念基于 20 世纪初积累的医生注册存量。这并没有根据退休、移民等原因造成的力量损耗进行调整。
估计目前在印度执业的医生数量，以及在对存量损耗进行调整后，2030 年将可获得的医生数量。
本文使用印度医学理事会（MCI）的历史数据（1960-2015 年），这些数据来自其网站上的印度医学登记处，以及从经济合作与发展组织（OECD）和目的地国家来源获取的医生移民数据。
本文发现，2014 年印度每 10000 人口中只有 4.8 名执业医生，而不是人们普遍认为的每 10000 人中有 7 名医生。其余的注册医生要么已经退休，要么已经移民到国外行医。预计到 2030 年，该国每 10000 人将只能达到约 6.9 名执业医生的比例。
鉴于目前每 10000 人拥有的医生数量及其在未来 15 年的增长前景，到 2030 年实现甚至是中等程度的 1:1000 的医生-人口比例似乎是一项不可能完成的任务。因此，要想为农村人口提供公平的医疗保健，就必须创新并在全印度范围内为农村地区实验一种特殊的从业者队伍。
