22 New AIIMS Being Setup To Bridge Human Resource Shortage In Health Sector, Says Union Minister 

Union Health Minister JP Nadda has said that 22 new All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) are being set up to meet the rising human resource needs of the health sector during the first convocation of, AIIMS Bhubaneshwar, Economic Times has reported.

At the event, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan urged the Health Minister to install a statue of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The minister accepted the Dharmendra Pradhan’s demand.

The news AIIMS are coming up under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana, the minister said. He added that the scheme was aimed at reducing the regional imbalance in the health sector and tertiary fields. The minister stressed that the quality of health care in the country would depend on the quality of students produced by the medical education system.

JP Nadda said that the government had hiked the retirement age of doctors to 65 years, focused on multi-skilling of doctors to meet the shortage of specialists and set up new medical and nursing colleges to ensure that the health sector had adequate human resources.

“We are expanding the network of our medical colleges in a big way by upgrading 58 district hospitals to medical colleges. Twenty-four new medical colleges have been announced in this year's budget. Twenty state cancer institutes and 50 tertiary cancer care centres are also being set up,” Nadda said.

The government’s plan to set up more medical education institutes will increase the supply of doctors, thereby helping the country to meet the rising healthcare demands of citizens.