• August 10, 2019

India Accepts WHO Report Stating 57% Doctors In India Are Quacks

NEW DELHI Aug 10: A 2016 World Health Organisation (WHO) Report stating that 57.3% of those practising allopathic medicine did not have any medical qualification, was rubbished by the Government in January 2018. However, the data has now gained official approval.

The health ministry is now drawing references from the report to allow community health practitioners to practise modern medicine under the Nation Medical Commission Bill.

The study was led by Oxford professor Sudhir Anand and his former student Victoria Fan. One of their primary objective of the study was to identify the gaps in the “woefully inadequate” existing database of the health workers in the country.
Published on July 4, 2016, the study titled The Health Workforce In India describes the “nature of health workforce inequalities” in the country and highlights several challenges faced by the country.
Among some of the conclusions made in the report, for a population of 1.02% billion in 2001, there were just 20 lakh health workers in the country.
Of these, 39.6% were doctors, 30.5% were nurses and a 1.2% constituted dentists.
Of all doctors, 77.2% were allopathic, and 22.8% were homoeopathic. The remaining 28.8% of the workforce constituted pharmacists, traditional and faith healers, etc.