Making efforts for 80,000 MBBS seats by 2021: Harsh Vardhan

New Delhi, Dec 22: Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Monday said that the government has been making an endeavour to increase the overall availability of MBBS seats to 80,000.

"In 2020, the overall availability of MBBS seats...risen to 42,495 in government institutions," he added. Centre is striving to achieve the WHO target of the doctor-patient ratio of "1 for every 1,000" by 2021, he stated.

He was addressing a ceremony to mark the beginning of the first academic session All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Rajkot, to run from a temporary campus for now, through video-conferencing from Delhi. This will be the first AIIMS in Gujarat, groundbreaking for which would be performed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said at the event.

With 50 MBBS students, the inaugural batch of AIIMS Rajkot will function out of a temporary campus set up in a section of the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Government Medical College and PDU Hospital in Rajkot.

The institute, Vardhan said, will have 125 MBBS seats, 60 nursing seats, a 750-bed hospital and a number of multi-speciality and super-speciality departments.

"From the academic session 2013-14 onwards, the total number of MBBS seats in the six new AIIMS has gone up to 600, providing an opportunity to an additional 300 aspirants.

With the addition of new AIIMS, including AIIMS Rajkot, the overall availability of MBBS seats in the country has gone up to 42,495 in government institutions. These MBBS seats will see a further increase in future as AIIMS Rajkot shifts from its temporary campus to the permanent campus and as infrastructure and human resource augmentation takes place," the minister said.