76% posts for professors at six All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) institutions are vacant, health minister J P Nadda informed the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) on July 21, 2017.

The six AIIMS at Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, Patna, Raipur and Rishikesh were established under the first phase of the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY, Prime Minister’s Health Protection Scheme), 2003.

The objective was to correct regional imbalances in affordable and reliable tertiary healthcare services and augment quality medical education.

As many as 178 of the 258 posts were advertised while 76 posts were re-advertised, Nadda told the Lok Sabha.

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Source: Source: Lok Sabha

As many as 1,300 posts were advertised for AIIMS at Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, Patna, Raipur and Rishikesh last year. Only 300 were selected and 200 finally joined, the Indian Express reported on July 5, 2017.

“While substantially higher salary structures in the private sector for specialities such as nuclear medicine and neurosurgery is one factor, making recruitment for senior posts like professor and additional professor extremely difficult, the other factor is the lack of facilities in smaller centres where AIIMS have come up,” the Express reported.

The government has doubled the allocation for PMSSY to Rs 3,975 crore from Rs 1,953 crore.

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Source: Compilation of union budget by CBGA

Six more AIIMS are planned at Nagpur in Maharashtra, Kalyani in West Bengal, Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, Bathinda in Punjab, Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh and Kamrup in Assam.

(Yadavar is principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)

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Swagata Yadavar

    Swagata Yadavar is an award-winning independent journalist based in New Delhi. She writes on public policy, healthcare and gender related themes. Previously, she worked with ThePrint, IndiaSpend and The Week. Her bylines appear in Cancer World, Al Jazeera, Business Insider, Article 14, Scroll, Behenbox among others.