The country is facing a huge shortage of over 60 per cent nurses in health care and hospital administration, the government said today.

"Around four lakh nurses in the country are in active service. Around 10 lakh more nurses are required at present," Union Health and Family Welfare Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, said today while giving away the National Florence Nightingale Award to nurses for their meritorious services.

Twenty-five nurses from different states today received the award on the occasion of the 100th birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale.

The minister said nurses and midwives are the pillars of health care delivery system and hospitals can not function without them.

There are around 10.35 lakh nurses registered with the Nursing Council of whom nearly 40 per cent would be in active service. Many have retired or gone abroad or given up nursing services after marriage. That leaves only around four lakh nurses in the country in active service, he said.

In order to meet the shortage of nurses and bring the availability of nursing personnel on a par with the developed countries an expenditure of over Rs 2,000 crore is being incurred to establish infrastructure for promoting nursing in the country.

While 132 Auxiliary Nursing and Midwifery schools and 137 General Nursing and Midwifery Schools are ready to come up in different states, Nursing Councils and Nursing Cells are being strengthened at different states and districts amongst others, the minister informed.

Along with this, the government has also relaxed certain norms to encourage more admissions to the nursing course.

While the student-patient ratio has been relaxed from 1:5 to 1:3, and adoption of a pragmatic approach in respect of faculty requirements, the qualifications and experience norms and the upper age limit of faculty have also been relaxed.

He also said that super speciality hospitals have been allowed to start M Sc programmes without insisting on having graduate programmes. 100 nursing seats would be allowed to parent hospitals without insisting on a medical college.

Vice-President M Hamid Ansari was also present on the occasion.