The government has set up rural healthcare centres but they have failed to deliver because of lack of trained medical personnel and the reluctance of the undergraduate doctors to visit the rural areas as a part of their internship in their MBBS curricula.
To address this issue, the government is planning to award extra credits to the interns for the rural visits or enable them to graduate on a fast track mode. However, this process will not be helpful in long run as not many doctors are really motivated to serve in the rural areas and a job done half-heartedly does not really bring the benefits expected out of this program. Also, it is obvious that people used to city-bred life find it difficult to adjust to the rural setup and that too where there are no accompanied monetary gains.
A more logical step would be to tackle this problem at village level. As a part of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), one should visit the schools in rural areas and through lucid lectures / presentation, explain to the students as to how engineers and doctors can work together to provide a proper healthcare setup to their village. Then through a screening process testing their aptitude and academic performance, a few selected students should be groomed to take up medicine / engineering through scholarship in institutes of repute. Of course, proper mechanism needs to be put in place to ensure that the selected students do not drop out from the course mid-way and on completion of their courses / training, should go back to their respective villages to help run the healthcare centres already setup by the government.
It is envisaged that such a program would churn out trained people who would be genuinely concerned about the welfare of their village and hence, address the concerns of their community in a more efficient manner.
To address this issue, the government is planning to award extra credits to the interns for the rural visits or enable them to graduate on a fast track mode. However, this process will not be helpful in long run as not many doctors are really motivated to serve in the rural areas and a job done half-heartedly does not really bring the benefits expected out of this program. Also, it is obvious that people used to city-bred life find it difficult to adjust to the rural setup and that too where there are no accompanied monetary gains.
A more logical step would be to tackle this problem at village level. As a part of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), one should visit the schools in rural areas and through lucid lectures / presentation, explain to the students as to how engineers and doctors can work together to provide a proper healthcare setup to their village. Then through a screening process testing their aptitude and academic performance, a few selected students should be groomed to take up medicine / engineering through scholarship in institutes of repute. Of course, proper mechanism needs to be put in place to ensure that the selected students do not drop out from the course mid-way and on completion of their courses / training, should go back to their respective villages to help run the healthcare centres already setup by the government.
It is envisaged that such a program would churn out trained people who would be genuinely concerned about the welfare of their village and hence, address the concerns of their community in a more efficient manner.
