Doctors reacted with anger after a government minister suggested they only work forty hours a week. India’s shortage of doctors often makes their job harder, outraged medicos suggested as they claim to work often double that figure. One doctor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) stated that doctors sometimes work between 100 and […]
specialist doctors
Lack of forensic doctors highlights a national crisis
Shocking findings from Punjab have served to highlight one of the biggest issues confronting public health in India: the country’s lack of specialist doctors. Doctors untrained in the field of forensics perform eighty percent of autopsies in the state. This is resulting in “poor quality of work”, warns Dr D S Bhullar, president of the […]
Regulate telemedicine, doctors say
Telemedicine can provide a useful route for patients getting a consultation who otherwise face difficulty in seeing a doctor. However, the country’s apex doctors’ network has called for clear guidelines on the practise amidst legal uncertainty following a recent court case. Two doctors were found culpable by the Bombay High Court (BHC) in the death […]
Sub-par healthcare kills more than a million
India loses around 1.6 million deaths each year to sub-par healthcare according to a new study published in The Lancet. The vast majority of these deaths are entirely preventable. This figure is twice the established number of people who died due to lack of access to healthcare, which is estimated to be around 838,000 people. This […]
Heart diseases kill, but heart doctors are in short supply
Heart diseases are India’s biggest killers. In 2016, 28.1 percent of all deaths were due to cardiovascular ailments. Yet, despite losing 1.7 million lives to heart disease every year, India does not have enough cardiologists to manage the burden. “India needs 88,000 cardiologists. It has just 4,000.” India needs 88,000 cardiologists. It has just 4,000. By […]
Shortages of specialist doctors
India’s community health centres, where primary healthcare is delivered at the grassroots level, suffer from an 81 percent shortage of specialist staff, including surgeons, general physicians and paediatricians. These shortages of staff are particularly prevalent in rural environments and may be leading to otherwise preventable deaths. The findings were part of the 2016 Rural Health […]