The Union Health Minister J P Nadda while addressing the first convocation of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhubaneswar said that 22 new AIIMS are coming up across India to reduce the regional imbalance in the healthcare and tertiary fields. The new AIIMS institutions will be built under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana across the country to cope with a shortage of skilled human resource in the health sector.
The Health Minister also said that several initiatives such as increasing the retirement age of doctors to 65 years, setting up of more medical and nursing schools, multi-skilling of doctors to overcome the shortage of specialists, have been taken by the Centre to improve medical education.
The Minister also said that in order to ensure better standards of medical education, the Centre has also undertaken suitable amendments in the Graduate Medical Education Regulations and the Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations for making common counselling for admission in medical colleges mandatory.
He said, since 2014-15, post-graduate seats have been increased by over 8,500 and undergraduate seats by over 16,000.
He said the government is expanding the network of medical colleges by upgrading 58 district hospitals. Twenty-four new medical colleges, twenty state cancer institutes and 50 tertiary cancer care centres will be established.
The minister also said that AIIMS will introduce campus recruitment soon to retain the graduates from the institute.