Delay in holding NEET exam by Centre to cause doc crunch

Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government after coming to power brought in many major reforms in the health sector. One of her government's important moves was to increase the MBBS seats in the state from 900 in 2011 to 3,850 in 2020 which came as a boost to the health infrastructure of the government run hospitals and medical colleges.

But due to the delay in conducting National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) by the Centre, there will be a major crisis of interns in the state in three and half years from now when the final year MBBS students will complete their internship, feel a section of health officials. NEET is a nationwide medical entrance examination conducted by the National Testing Agency.

Normally, the MBBS courses begin from August every year after the NEET is conducted in May. But this year the NTA is yet to conduct the examination due to the pandemic. It is not yet clear when NEET will be conducted and the MBBS course will start. Nearly 3,800 MBBS doctors join medical colleges as interns in each year and it is the interns who take off the pressure of the senior doctors.

State had just over 150 undergraduate medical seats during Independence; the figure stood at around 900 when the erstwhile Left Front government voted out of power in 2011.

Around 3,150 MBBS seats are with 18 government medical colleges while 850 are with 6 private medical colleges. Around 750 MBBS seats have increased in the state since independence till 2011. During the present tenure of the Mamata Banerjee government the MBBS seats have been increased by four times that too only in nine years. There are currently 70,000 doctors in the state out of which 13,000 are attached to various government run hospitals.

Some of the doctors from the city in April wrote to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union health minister and HRD minister urging them to allow the states to conduct medical entrance examination for this year in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic.

"West Bengal Joint Entrance Board has better infrastructure to conduct the medical entrance examination in the rural areas while the National Testing Agency conducts the exam based on some city oriented exam centers. The Center should have allowed the state to conduct the examination in phased manner at non-containment zones keeping in mind the importance of the examination," Dr AK Maity, one of the doctors who wrote to PM Modi said.