 You're watching News Made Easy. I'm on Indio Chakravarty. The neat PG counseling process is going to begin from the 12th of January and not just junior doctors, medical students, but you and I should heave a sigh of relief because of that. Why? Because without that process doctors can practice. MBBS, those with bachelor's degrees can practice as doctors but they cannot become specialists. They cannot get more experience and go up the ladder of medical science and we need to as a country, as a nation, bump up the number of specialists that we have. And I'm going to begin with one single data point. We have about 41 crore children in India and by children I mean those between the ages 0 to 14 years. I'm not taking up to 18 years. How many pediatricians do you think we have? 27,000. Just 27,000. That means we have one pediatrician, one child specialist for every 15,000 children in this country and by children, again, as I said, I don't mean those who are below 18. I mean those who are below 14 years of age. One for every 15,000. How does that compare with some country like UK for instance? In UK, there's one pediatrician for every 1,100 children between the ages 0 to 14. So that's the ratio and that's a huge, huge difference and this is just pediatricians. Think of something like cardiologists and, you know, India is one of the countries where there's a lot of heart disease related risks. A lot of people have it. And we have just 5,500 cardiologists or heart specialists in this country according to the Cardiologist Society of India. Just 5,500. That means about one cardiologist for approximately 30,000 people in this country. And if you look at the number of cardiovascular disease related deaths in this country in the last 10, 2020, about 48,000,000 people are estimated to have died of cardiovascular disease. That's the kind of ratios that we are talking about. These appalling lack of specialists is for every kind of specialization. And I'm going to take some data from which has been compiled by the web portal, Ken, from government data and from data which has been released by various medical associations, various specialist associations. And I'm going to tell you how, what is the percentage of availability of certain kinds of specialists in India, right? And I'm looking at what we require and how many we have. Gynecologists and obstetricians, right? We have just 23% of what we need. Anesthesiologists who are required for surgeries, just 17% of the number we need in terms of radiologists, right? Any kind of, you know, tests, various kinds of tests that you need, you need radiologists, only 15% of what we need. And I said the number of pediatricians is apolic, just 14% of what India needs. And the important point is that if you live in a metro, you probably not face this shortage because most of these specialists are actually concentrated in India cities and in metros. When it comes to villages, obviously the situation is much, much worse. Even in government-run community health centers, the vacancies haven't been filled. So there are posts which have been sanctioned but they haven't been filled. Again, I'm going to take data which has been compiled by Ken and also look at data which is government data. And I'm going to tell you the number of vacancies of posts which have been sanctioned. They should be there. It's not even what is required. It's just that these have been sanctioned and they're not there. 68.4% of sanctioned posts are vacant when it comes to surgeons. You look at obstetricians and gynecologists, 56.1% are vacant. And amongst physicians in general, nearly 67% of positions are unfilled. Pediatricians, 63% are unfilled. And overall in terms of all specialists, 63% of positions which are sanctioned are vacant right now. These are sanctioned positions which are vacant in community health centers in rural India. And government data also tells us what is required. How many do we need and what is the shortfall. And again, if I look at surgeons, there's a shortfall of nearly 79%. Obstetricians and gynecologists, that's almost 70% shortfall. If I look at physicians in general, there's a 78% shortfall in terms of pediatrician. Again, more than 78% shortfall and even takes all specialists in rural India in community health centers. There's a 76% shortfall of what is required. That is why it is so essential that we get more specialists. And that is why this delay in, first delay a postponement of the NEET PG exams. And then a delay even after the exams are held in the counseling process. Without which they cannot be allocated to medical colleges, private or government medical colleges. Cannot take up this specialization, start studying for it without that. And all of this got delayed. And that's the huge problem. And if you think about it, there were 45,000 people, young doctors, who had cleared their NEET PG exams, who were ready to start postgraduate degrees, start in September when they took that exam. But it's only in January that they're finally going to be allocated their specialties and subspecialties and the medical colleges they are going to go to. And there's another big, equally big reason I think why this was so dangerous, this delay was so dangerous. And that too in the middle of COVID. That's because in the Indian hospital system, it's junior doctors, mostly resident doctors, interns and resident doctors, who are the foot soldiers of the medical system. Consultants come, they look at a patient, advise what has to be done. But ultimately the last mile of giving medication, checking whether the medication is essentially the nursing system and the resident doctor system. Then it comes to changing medicines, reacting to symptoms, changes, monitoring them. It is all the resident doctor system which does it. And this is not just India, it's the way it is everywhere in the world, whether it is wards, whether it is ICUs, whether it's emergencies and casualty, what we call casualty. It's the resident junior doctors who actually handled final patient care. Now the typical career path of a medical student who doesn't want to just start practicing after a bachelor's degree is to start studying for their postgraduate. And for that they have to take this neat PG exam and then there's counseling according to which they get allotted certain medical colleges depending on their rank and they can choose their specialization depending on again their rank and their results. And the typical career path is that once they get that thing, they start as junior residents and they have to go study for 3 years. And then they can take their postgraduate exam and then they can specialize. They can start practicing as full-time consultants and specialize. And for the first 2 years these junior doctors have their nose to the grind. In fact most of the 3 years. It's only towards the end of the third year that they're given some time off to study for their final year exams and look what has happened because of neat PG what happened is that a large number of hospitals actually had a shortfall of first-year junior residents because once these people took their exam hospitals no longer wanted to hire them because they felt that as soon as counseling would start these people would leave. They'd quit and go to another medical college or a teaching hospital and they specialize in something else and it starts. So there's no point in hiring these people. So most of these 45,000 people were actually who could have helped during the COVID period were sitting at home. And the second-year residents mostly second-year residents and those who were not going to take their PG or hadn't qualified for these are the only people who were available. There was a sudden huge shortage and that's what has happened throughout the COVID period. Resident doctors have been running 24-hour shifts, 100-110 work hour weeks and they're exhausted and that is why that anger bubbled up and went out onto the streets. We saw those protests, the strikes and these strikes would have continued if the Supreme Court had actually not intervened and made sure that the counseling process had started and it's only when the promises were given that the strike was withdrawn and we are very lucky that the third wave, this Omicron wave which still now is 5-10% hospitalization but you know if it spreads, if it rips through India's population there'll be many more hospitalizations taking place even if they're not very serious hospitals will be full and that's when you'll need resident doctors. So in a sense we're extremely lucky that the Supreme Court intervened and in a sense forced the government to act and start this process. So we're lucky that the third wave has come only after this has happened and in a sense it's a huge positive not just for as I said junior doctors who want to do the PGN specialization but for you and me. So that's the show today, keep watching NewsClick, like our video and share it as well.