New Delhi: Health Ministry has issued the directive to include married women for nursing courses, to fill vacancies. As per sources, India has abysmally shameful ratio of one nurse for every 1,100 people, due to which, the ministry has decided to raise the bar of eligibility by enrolling married women into the nursing courses in the country.
Last year, education sector witnessed numerous reforms for upgrading its standards. Now, it is the turn of the Health Ministry to wake up and to fill nearly 3.5 lakh vacancies for nurses in the country. T Dileep Kumar, Nursing Council Director, has issued a letter to all the states directing them to allow married women to take admission in nursing colleges and hope to meet the crunch.
Mr Kumar mentioned thatwith 2,000 nursing diploma schools, 1,200 nursing degree schools and 281 M Sc nursing colleges in the country, the annual production of nurses is around 60,000. But the majority prefers private sector than public, due to which, it is facing a gap of 3.5 lakh nurses. Moreover, officials point out the basic reason for the acute shortage to the migration of large number of qualified nurses to countries like Europe for better remuneration.
In developed countries, the nurse-doctor ratio is estimated to be 3:1, while that in India, it stands at 1.5:1. According to the Ministry's estimates, India will require 10.4 lakh nurses. Out of the total registered nurses (9.3 lakh), so far only 40% of them, that is, 3.7 lakh are expected to be active. Talking in terms of India's capacity, it has the ability to train 79850 diploma nurses, 41650 graduate nurses and 1940 postgraduate nurses per year, but the numbers collapse, as over 20% of this number every year head to foreign shores.
