Adityanath says medical students will have to sign bonds to serve in UP’s remote areas

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Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath said on Saturday that medical students will have to sign bonds to serve in remote areas after attaining their degrees to correct a huge imbalance in the doctor to patient ratio.

“The government invests Rs 10 crore to produce a doctor. Students will have to sign bonds undertaking to serve in remote areas after attaining degrees,” Adityanath said at a press conference in Agra after addressing the first episode of the ‘Highway to Progress’ programme of HT’s sister publication Hindustan.

The BJP’s high profile chief minister did not say when the exercise of signing bonds will begin.

According to the National Health Profile, 2018, released by the Central Bureau of Health Intelligence — the health intelligence wing of the Directorate General of Health Services under the Health Ministry, the doctor to patient ratio in Uttar Pradesh is 1:19,962.

“Many doctors deputed to village do not attend,” Adityanath said and acknowledged that his government was working to boost the number of colleges in the state.

“We are working on it. Till 2016, there were only 16 medical colleges. Now, 15 new medical colleges are coming up,” he said.

Adityanath also said that child mortality due to encephalitis has come down substantially in Uttar Pradesh and that he hoped the scourge of eastern UP would be eliminated in two years.

“In eastern UP more than 50,000 children died in past but casualties have fallen sharply and Swachh Bbharat mission helped to bring down the deaths. In two years we will end encephalitis,” the chief minister said.

Almost 100 children had died of encephalitis in the summer of 2017 at the government-run Baba Raghav Das Medical College in Gorakhpur.