In good news for medical students, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad today announced that there would be an additional 10,000 post-graduate medical seats in the country in the next couple of years.

At the annual convocation ceremony of the Lady Hardinge Medical College, Azad said that the Government has taken a slew of measures to increase the intake of PG students.

"We are also encouraging the medical colleges to start new PG courses and also have more PG seats as per the revised norms. I expect the total increase in PG seats during the session 2010-11 beginning September would be 4,000 seats," he said.

The government was also introducing a centrally sponsored scheme with a budget of Rs 1,350 crore for the purpose of upgradation of facilities for increase in the number of PG courses and start PG in new disciplines.

Through this scheme, the minister said, 4,000 seats would be available in the next academic session. "This along with the increase in seats in private institutions as well will lead to an additional 10,000 PG seats in the next two years".

Exhorting medical students to serve in rural areas of the country, Azad said, to encourage rural posting among doctors, additional weightage will be given in the Post Graduate entrance examination.

"Each of you must take advantage of this and pledge your initial years of service to the primary health care needs," he told the students who received the degrees today.

Doctors don't want to serve in villages: Azad

PTI adds:

Arguing that it was very difficult to post MBBS doctors in rural areas, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad today asserted that the proposed Bachelor of Rural Health course was targeted at areas where only nurses and midwives were available and no doctor was willing to go.

Azad is understood to have made these comments at a meeting with a delegation of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) who have opposed the introduction of such a course saying it will clash with MBBS doctors.

The IMA demanded that the rural medicine should be a diploma course and not a degree course, the institutes which will teach this course should be called schools instead of colleges and there should be separate registration for these rural doctors.

Responding to these demands, Azad even as he allayed their fears said, making the rural medicine course a diploma would dilute its importance.

He said that the areas where these doctors are proposed to be posted would be the ones where only auxiliary nurses are available.

"MBBS doctors are difficult to post in rural areas. Our main concern is how to improve rural healthcare," Azad is understood to have told the delegation.

Asking the MCI to be more "enthusiastic" about the proposal, he said, "the doctors would be posted at places where only ANMs are there and MBBS doctors are unlikely to be posted".

He said that already the government has diluted many provisions like not making surgery a part of the course.

The IMA delegation included its chief Dharamprakash the regional heads of the state IMA units.