“Liberate nursing and paramedical education.” This talk by Dr. Devi Shetty from 2017 found resonance as India struggles to stem Covid-19 cases in 2020.
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00:00We have made medical education as an elitist affair.
00:05Outstanding doctors across the world, with magic in their finger, most of them come from
00:11deprived background.
00:13Because these are the kids with the fire in the belly to work for 24 hours to change the
00:17rules of the game.
00:21We have a serious shortage of undergraduation seats and post-graduation seats.
00:25Just look at, that is the reason why all the corruption happens, all the scandals in medical
00:31education.
00:32Why it happens?
00:33Because there are very few seats.
00:35If 10 lakh people apply, if there are only 60,000 seats, naturally there will be lot
00:40of money changing hands.
00:42Now, first thing is how a medical college is built.
00:47It costs 400 crore rupees to build a medical college.
00:50If you go to Caribbean region, there are 35 medical colleges which are working in,
00:58which are training doctors for US, which is in a rented 50,000 square foot in a shopping
01:04mall, training fantastic doctors for US.
01:08Why are you spending 400 crore rupees and creating this edifice?
01:12It is ridiculous.
01:13All over the world, medical colleges do not have this rigid requirement.
01:18Medical colleges don't require 140 faculty members to train 100 students.
01:22140 faculty members can run a medical college with 1000 students.
01:27So, when the whole world has changed, we haven't changed.
01:31So today, what we have done, we have made medical education as an elitist affair.
01:38Poor children, when I was a young medical student, my classmates were all children from
01:43poor families.
01:45Today, children from poor families are not dreaming of becoming doctors.
01:49This will have a tremendous consequences.
01:54Outstanding doctors across the world with magic in their finger, most of them come from
01:59deprived background.
02:01Because these are the kids with the fire in the belly to work for 24 hours to change the
02:05rules of the game.
02:07If children from rich families become doctors, they opt for radiology, dermatology and other
02:13specialties where they can go home at 5 o'clock.
02:16Why should post graduate education be costing so much?
02:19Why should you pay 2 crore or 5 crore rupees or even 10 lakh rupees fees to become a specialist?
02:24All over the world, higher medical education is free of cost.
02:27So essentially, the problem is, all the problems we are happening, what's happening in the
02:34health care is not because of the government.
02:37It is because the privileged society doesn't ask the right question.
02:42Why every 12 minutes a pregnant lady should die during childbirth?
02:48Why 1.2, why 3 lakh children die the day they are born?
02:53Why 1.2 million children die before celebrating the first birthday?
02:58It is unacceptable.
02:59Why?
03:00Because we are not asking the right questions.
03:03Statistically, if these pregnant ladies had a very good antenatal checkup, 14 to 15% of
03:11them need caesarean section.
03:13That means we need to do 5.6 million caesarean, 5.2 million caesarean sections per year.
03:19To do that, we need 2 lakh gynecologists.
03:22We have 50,000 gynecologists, less than 50,000.
03:25Half of them don't practice obstetrics because they don't want to be woken up at night and
03:30all of them live in cities and 60% of children are born in rural India.
03:34We need 2 lakh anesthetists.
03:36We have less than 50,000 anesthetists.
03:38We need 2 lakh pediatricians to take care of all the kids coming.
03:41We have less than 50,000 pediatricians.
03:43We need at least 1.5 lakh radiologists.
03:46We have less than 10,500 radiologists.
03:50Then how do you expect the mental mortality to come down?
03:53It has nothing to do with money.
03:55This country doesn't require additional budgetary allocation.
03:59This country requires liberating medical, nursing and paramedical education.
04:03That's all.