Through concerted efforts of Government, there has been a significant increase of 87 per cent in MBBS seats and a massive 105 per cent increase observed in PG seats in last eight years, said Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya while speaking to media on Thursday.

Reiterating the government's commitment towards bringing a drastic paradigm shift in education in the country, he said that since 2014, several steps have been taken to ease the access to quality education in the country for the younger generation.

The Health Minister also underlined the impact of several initiatives taken for the quality medical education.

"We can see change happening at every nook and corner of the country. With this momentum and coordination among stakeholders, we will be able to create a holistic ecosystem of education in the country," Mandaviya told media.

"Since the Modi government came into power, concerted efforts have been taken to train and improve the affordability and accessibility to quality education for our students," he said adding that while India had a limited number of 387 medical colleges in 2014, the system was riddled with far too many problems.

There is a paradigm shift from input-based to outcome-based approaches and reforms under Modi government. Consequentially, we now have 648 medical colleges in 2022 with a whopping 96 per cent increase in the number of Government Medical Colleges (GMC) alone and a 42 per cent increase in the private sector, since 2014. At present, out of 648 medical colleges in the country, 355 are government and 293 are private. MBBS seats have also seen a massive 87 per cent increase from 51,348 in 2014 to 96,077 in 2022. Similarly, PG seats have observed an increase of 105 per cenr with 31,185 seats in 2014 to 63,842 in 2022, said Mandaviya.

He said that with a vision to create 10,000 MBBS seats in Government Medical Colleges (GMC), 58 colleges across 16 States have been approved with an increase of 3,877 MBBS seats. Similarly, to increase PG seats, 72 medical colleges in 21 states/UTs have been approved in phase I, with an increase of 4,058 PG seats. To create 4,000 PG seats in the GMCs, in phase II, a total of 47 colleges have been approved with an increase of 2,975 PG seats.

Emphasising on correcting regional imbalances in the availability of affordable and reliable tertiary healthcare, Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) was launched. The programme targets establishment of AIIMS like institutions and the upgradation of existing GMCs (by establishing super-speciality blocks) in a phased manner. 22 new AIIMS and projects for the up-gradation of 75 government medical colleges were taken up under the scheme.

"During Covid, we saw that our medical workforce played a crucial role of Covid warriors, but faced several challenges too like access to classroom education etc. In this regard, several steps were taken, DIKSHA platform (one nation, one digital platform) was one of them. It is the nation's digital infrastructure for providing quality e-content for school education in states/UTs. QR coded Energized Textbooks for all grades are available with 35 of the 36 states and UTs have now on boarded on platform and contextualised the content as per the local need," the Union Health Minister stated.