New Delhi, March 30: The Union health ministry has approved the addition of 184 postgraduate seats across nine government medical colleges in Bengal as part of a nationwide exercise to add more than 4,000 medical PG seats this year.

A health ministry order released yesterday lists over 1,900 additional MD and MS seats at over 100 government medical colleges across the country from the academic year 2017-18.

The remaining 2,100 additional PG seats will be in diploma courses.

Burdwan Medical College will be able to offer 45 additional seats, the highest among the colleges in Bengal. 

The expansion will also mean 64 additional MD and MS seats in five medical colleges in Bihar, 99 in four colleges in Assam, and nine at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences, Ranchi.

India's 470-odd medical colleges currently offer about 64,000 undergraduate (MBBS) seats but only about 32,000 PG seats, of which some 18,000 are in the clinical subjects. The gulf between the numbers of MBBS and PG seats has meant intense competition at the PG entrance exams.

Health officials say the expansion of PG seats was made possible by changing the sanctioned professor-to-PG student ratio in medical colleges from 1:2 to 1:3. The move is expected to substantially increase the number of specialists available for health-care services in the public and private sectors.

The additional PG seats may also help build faculty at the district hospitals that are set to be upgraded into medical colleges from the academic year 2019-20.

In Bengal, the district hospitals in Birbhum, Cooch Behar, Purulia, North Dinajpur and South 24-Parganas have been selected for upgrades to medical colleges.

Anaesthesiology is among the clinical subjects allowed the highest number of additional PG seats. The Vardhman Mahavir Medical College and Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi alone is set to increase its intake for the MD anaesthesiology course by 54 seats, from 11 to 65.

"Anaesthesiologists are needed in every surgery. They also manage patients in intensive care and patients in pain, and assist in palliative care. And there's an acute shortage of specialists," said a senior faculty member at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna, which has added 13 MD anaesthesiology seats.

A senior health official said it was easier to add seats for courses such as MD anaesthesiology and MD radio-diagnosis because, unlike most other specialities, they were not tagged to patient or bed requirements.

The faculty member at the Indira Gandhi Institute, who requested not to be named, said the increase in PG seats would also over time help ease the shortage of specialists at public hospitals in the districts.

"While many will work in the cities, we expect that some will also serve in small towns," the faculty member said.

Entry to PG courses in both government and private medical colleges is determined by a centralised common test that the health ministry says has made the admission process "transparent".