75,000 new medical seats in next 5 years: PM Modi

New Delhi, Aug 15 : Lamenting that middle-class students go abroad to pursue medical education, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his address to the nation on Independence Day on Thursday, promised to create 75,000 more medical seats over the next five years, adding to the existing over one lakh seats in the country.

"In the last 10 years we have increased the number of medical seats to nearly 1 lakh in the country," PM Modi said while delivering his eleventh Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort.

He lamented that children, mostly belonging to the middle class, are going abroad for medical education.

"Around 25,000 youths every year go abroad for medical education,” he said adding: “They go to such countries, that I get surprised when I hear about them.”

They spend "lakhs and crores" on medical education abroad, he said.

"So we have decided, 75,000 new seats will be created in the medical line in the next five years," Modi stated.

The PM noted that the government aims to “build such an education system in India that youngsters do not need to go abroad to study. In fact, we would want foreign students to come here and study.”

Medical Dialogues team had recently reported that as per government statistics, there are altogether 1,12,112 MBBS and 72,627 postgraduate (PG) medical seats available in the medical institutes across the country.

Informing the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for Health Smt. Anupriya Patel informed t that the number of medical colleges in India has increased by 88% - from 387 medical colleges before 2014 to 731 currently operative in the country.As per the MoS Health, the MBBS seats have increased by 118% from 2014 and the PG seats have increased by 133% since the year 2014. Before 2014, there were 51,348 MBBS and 31,185 PG seats available in the country.

Read Also: Altogether 1,12,112 MBBS, 72,267 PG Medical Seats across 731 Medical Colleges in India: MoS Health in Parliament

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister also introduced the Rashtriya Poshan Mission. He emphasises the vision of 'Swasth Bharat' (Healthy India) as part of the broader 'Viksit Bharat 2047' initiative.

“‘Viksit Bharat’ should also mean ‘Healthy Bharat’, thus nutrition is of prime importance,” he said.

“The first generation of a prosperous Bharat must be healthy, which is why we have launched the Poshan Mission,” Modi further added.