The total number of doctors after looking at the unpredictable crisis in India has come out as a big challenge is given in this time the dual disease burden-the the pandemic patients and the existing one requiring medical care.
Hence the country is now moving from a doctor centred healthcare system to one that is
multidisciplinary in nature, said the special secretary of health and family welfare ministry, in an interview.
He spoke of the personal protection equipment, ventilators, budgets, human resources of
healthcare and the impact of COVID 19 on the medical education of India.
He was asked this question in the interview, how is India coping with the shortage of doctors and nurses in the pandemic considering the fact that there is a surge of demand in medical care services across India.
India has begun to shift itself from a healthcare service that revolved completely around a doctor to a service that is of multidisciplinary nature now. this is led y doctors but now
involves a variety of specialised healthcare workers to increase the effectiveness of the
overall system. This has most relevancy to COVID 19 cases in India.
He stated in the interview that “ we have here taken a streamlining approach of care vision in a staggered manner and for the very first time have planned nad devised roles for each of the workers for the specific COVID 19 while mapping their availability in the said districts.
India has about 70 lakh healthcare workers in various categories according to the data of
health ministry in September 2019. We estimate the availability of 920,000 qualified
allopathic doctors and specialists, 1.55 million nurses and about 750,000 nurse associates or auxiliary nurse midwives, 200,000 dentists and almost 600,00 qualified AYUSH practitioners and 1 million, pharmacists. There might be maldistribution of staff but definitely, there is no shortage in India for the medical staff.
Many new students and medical staff have been made ready to undertake field surveillance with the guidance of field supervisors with the need of necessary expertise.
The intensive care units have respiratory therapists under training nad handling of ventilators.
In the interview, he was asked several questions on shortage and how we are dealing with the pandemic.
There are about 275,000 testing kits made available at the beginning of the outbreak which has risen till now to 419,000 even after being continuously used for the protection of healthcare personnel.
The specifications are conveyed to the state government as well as requesting the insurance of any procurement at their level must also confirm the health ministry standards.
