Gujarat may soon get 5 new medical colleges

New Delhi, Jun 08: For the next academic year, the Gujarat government will soon establish five new medical colleges in the state at a cost of Rs 2500 crore. This takes the number of medical colleges to 36 as compared to the current 30.

The newly-built medical colleges will also increase the medical seats for undergraduates to 6,200 from that of the existing 5700.

With the best equipped infrastructure of hospitals, treatment centers, Gujarat could soon be considered as a medical hub of the country.

The new medical colleges will come up at Rajpipla, Navsari, Godhra, Porbandar, and Morbi with 100 medical seats each.

Govt aims to set up at least one medical college in every district

PM Narendra Modi has often talked about having one medical college, with a top level tech infrastructure, in every district.

"The goal of having at least one medical college in every district and ensuring that medical education was in reach of everyone will result in the country getting a record number of doctors after 10 years," the PM said.

The Prime Minister said that in 2001 when he became the chief minister of Gujarat there were only nine medical colleges with about 1,100 seats. "Today, there are 30 medical colleges including private and government. We want to have one medical college in each district of India including Gujarat as well. The total number of medical seats in Gujarat is 8,000 presently... We have changed the rules and now medical and engineering students can study in their mother tongue," he said.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for setting up medical colleges in every district to enable health services. From the next academic year, five new colleges will be set up in Morbi, Porbandar, Navsari, Godhra and Rajpipla under GMERS," said Dr R Dixit, Additional Director, Directorate of Medical Education and Research (Medical Education) in Gandhinagar, as reported by Ahmedabadmirror.

"In addition to the new colleges, Civil Hospital (Asarwa), Gandhinagar Civil Hospital and Sola Civil Hospital will be turned into super-speciality hospitals which will further strengthen health services and medical education," said Dr Dixit.