By IANS
New Delhi : India needs at least 1.5 million more teachers, doctors and nurses to tackle the shortage of skilled manpower in the field of health and education, global voluntary group Oxfam International said here Thursday.
Of the total requirement of health and education workers, the country needs 1.34 million doctors, nurses and midwives and 305,000 (0.305 million) teachers to provide basic health care and primary education to every child.
“India needs more midwives than doctors, nurses and teachers. If the government will allocate nine percent of the country’s GDP in the health and education sectors and citizens get behind this call for action, we can change prospects for millions of children,” Ben Phillips, Oxfam campaigns and policy manager South-Asia, told IANS.
“Health and education cannot remain privileges of the wealthy, they are rights for all,” he maintained.
Commenting on the shortage of doctors and nurses, Archana Kumar, a paediatrician at the Chhatrapati Sahuji Maharaj Medical University, Lucknow, said: “In Uttar Pradesh there is not even a single paediatric cancer hospital. As I am a cancer specialist as well, so all the children suffering from cancer are referred to me.
“I only have a sister regularly working with me and a rotating team. We are extremely short-staffed in comparison to the number of patients visiting the hospital. Moreover patients suffering from cancer need long treatment and care. Hence they have to even share beds,” said Kumar, one of the ambassadors of Oxfam’s “For All” campaign launched Thursday.
The campaign calls for investment in more teachers, doctors and nurses in the country.
“The biggest problem I face is that it is hard to manage such a large number of children,” said Afsana, who teaches 175 children in the two-teacher Kassamandi Khund village school near Lucknow.
Kumar also said that a large proportion of children in India suffer from malnutrition because of lack of awareness regarding the right kind of food they must eat.
A briefing paper released by Oxfam on the occasion said that India is a country of extremes. There is world-class advanced medical treatment for the wealthy and medical tourists but maternal mortality and infant mortality rates are worse than sub-Saharan Africa in India’s poorest districts.
It has world-class economists, engineers and IT professionals but it is also home to the largest number of people in any country without access to education.