New system needed to up availability of doctors: Kovind

New Delhi:President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday called for a new regulatory system to enhance availability of doctors and medical professionals as work load of the existing doctors was incredibly high.

"Doctors need help in the form of more colleagues. And this is where we need a new regulatory system to enhance availability of doctors and medical professionals in our society.

"In the absence of this, the work load on our doctors is very high," said Kovind during his address at the 45th Convocation of the All India Institute of Medical Science here.

Stressing that currently the medical colleges in India, whether run by the government or private institutions, have only about 67,000 undergraduate seats and 31,000 postgraduate seats, Kovind said: "In a country of 1.3 billion people this is highly inadequate.

"We have to overcome regulatory bottlenecks and interest groups that have prevented the growth of quality medical education in our country."

"This gives us far fewer medical graduates and postgraduates every year than our people need. It also leads to aspiring medical students seeking admission in colleges in other countries, simply because they have limited options at home."

"This is simply not acceptable. As a nation, we need to address this situation very urgently. We need to create more opportunities for those young people who want to make medicine their calling," said Kovind.

Urging doctors from AIIMS to give back to society, the President also said that doctors need to be legitimately rewarded for their academic excellence, their medical skills and their expertise. 

"Yet, as doctors, their services must be available both to those who can afford their fees and also to those who are less fortunate and cannot. A disease does not distinguish between rich and poor but unfortunately the poor suffer the most.

"It is for society to profit from medical science -- it is not for medical science to profiteer from society," said Kovind.