Missing Doctors: An Epic Healthcare Challenge in India

Indian Healthcare

For decades now, shortage of well-trained medical specialists has proved detrimental for the Indian healthcare system. The situation is so acute, that patients are making do with substandard/inadequate treatment in hospitals and clinics. Queues for a specialist are getting longer and long-distanced. A solution is not in sight. Telemedicine has been experimented with but this may place demand on the already burdened Indian doctor.

Ironically, India trains top class medical specialists every year but fails to either retain them or use them judiciously. Per government figures, doctor to patient ratio in India matches the World Health Organization (WHO) standard of one doctor per thousand people. Unfortunately, on ground, medical specialists are far and few. Metropolitan areas are disproportionately over-served as compared to towns and villages.

Brain Drain

In this era of globalization, professionals are free to migrate to other countries. In the past half a century, Indian doctors have left in droves to work in  developed nations as the later offer fat pay packages and a better quality of life. A few years back, it was mainly USA and UK, but now, the Gulf nations, Canada, Australia and even smaller European countries have started hiring India-trained doctors in big numbers.

Over 100,000 India-trained doctors are employed overseas. Just to get an idea, more than 50,000 work in UK. One in five doctors in Australia is Indian and One in 10 doctors in Canada is Indian. As per World Health Organization’s ideal doctor patient ratio, India needs a total of 20 lakh doctors to keeps its population healthy. The actual available count is just half of this.

It's the economy, stupid!

GDP percentage allocation to public healthcare is less than 2%. This is abysmal for a enormously populated country like India. Looking at long term trends, the economy of a country decides its people’s health. In relatively favorable economic scenarios too, the allocation doesn’t go up proportionately in India. Further, these allocations become secondary when there is ample pilferage en route.

During a phase of economic slowdown the situation turns even more critical. First, healthcare is not a major agenda for the Indian government and second, even if it were, it doesn’t have enough doctors to keep its healthcare system in the pink. The skewed demand and supply equation burdens the existing doctors in India. Their workplaces are far from pleasant especially in public health settings. Moreover, socio-political and environmental factors don’t offer much attraction to the very intelligent mind. These circumstances together act as triggers for much in demand doctors to relocate overseas. As a step ahead, parents in middle and upper class families actively urge their kids to seek greener pastures in thriving economies.

Reality versus Hype

It’s no secret that the science of statistics carries the ignominy of data getting cooked up if not bound by integrity. Figures get fudged. Errors of omission and commission find their way into data easily if intent is slanted. The ground reality is what we actually see around us. Reality is apparent to the eye and can’t be veiled by any fancy data.

Often, a health minister makes a headline-grabbing announcement about mega fund allocation to build state-of-the-art hospitals. Thinking clearly through, one wonders, how will funds made available through a new universal health scheme compensate for lack of medical specialists? Buildings and expensive hi-tech equipment can’t replace the crying need for doctors. Its time that India makes a holistic turnaround in its social and economic situation so as to retain its doctors and make its citizens reasonably healthy.