Health workforce Statistics: Current Needs and Requirements Introduction Trained healthcare workforce is an important determinant of efficiency and outcomes of any health system as devised by WHO health systems approach. India one of the most populous country of the world has always felt a dire need of healthcare workforce even having one of the largest medical education and capacity building system. On the other hand we have a variety of health cadre namely from an ASHA to super specialized doctors. In our presentation we have critically analyzed the distribution of health workforce in India and its impacts on health and healthcare delivery for the mass of our society. The Health Workforce in Nutshell India faces an acute shortage of trained health workforce. India has a large basket of interventions to improve the healthcare but they are adversely effected by shortage of trained, motivated and supported health workforce. The shortages and misdistribution of health workforce have a large contribution to inequities in health outcomes. India’s health workforce is a combination of both registered, formal health-care providers and informal medical practitioners. We have a very unique health system with a large public health system and a blanket of juxtaposed private health care system. Similar situation is also present in training and education of health workforce. There is also a lack of data on the exact number of health care providers. Issues Quite a percentage of Indian population is spread in the rural areas but on the other hand the concentration of health care is in the urban system. The health care providers are highly concentrated in the urban area. Health worker densities are very low in rural settings when compared with urban areas. The next issue is lack of support to the health care providers practicing in the rural area and attraction of high income, support and provisions in the urban settings for the highly specialized workforce which includes doctors, dentist etc. At the national level, the aggregate density of doctors, nurses and midwives was 2.08 per 1000 population, which was lower than WHO’s critical shortage threshold of 2.28 . Conclusion In a concluding remark the production of health workforce has increased too many folds which has cost increased privatization of health education. On the other hand the public medical education system has not expanded at the required level. There is need to tap the potential in the private players with keep in mind stringent control of quality and cost. The increase in production is not going to resolve the issues of health worker availability and distribution. The need of the hour is to find sustainable measures to target the acute shortfall in the trained health workforce in India.

1. Health workforce Statistics:
Current Needs and
Requirements
Group:

2. Introduction
• India faces an acute shortage of trained health workforce.
• There are large discrepancies in health workforce distribution and inequalities
in health worker provisions.
• This misdistribution adversely effects health outcomes in India.

4. The Health Workforce in Nutshell
• There are no official, reliable measure to estimate the health workforce due to
different cadres, councils, systems of medicines and governing bodies.
• The sources of information are mostly census, NSSO and professional bodies
like MCI.

6. • Estimates based on the Census show that India has approximately 20 health workers per
10,000 people.
• The 2.2 million health workers included 677,000 allopathic doctors and dentists
accounting for 31% of the health workforce and 200,000 AYUSH practitioners accounting
for 9% of the health workforce.
• Nurses and midwives (30%) and pharmacists (11%) are the other two large groups.
• Others including ophthalmic assistants, radiographers and technicians accounted for 9%
of the total.
• The combined density of allopathic doctors, nurses and midwifes (11.9) is about half of
the
• WHO benchmark of 25.4 workers in these categories per 10,000 population for
achieving 80% of births attended by skilled personnel in cross-country comparisons.
Reference: Human Resources Technical Paper I Situation Analysis of the Health Workforce in India Krishna D. Rao

7. Issues
• Estimates show that almost 60% of health workers live in urban areas, which
account for 26% of the country’s population.
• Health worker density in urban areas at 42 per 10,000 is nearly four times
higher than rural areas which have only 11.8 workers for a similar size of
population.
• The issue of health workforce is a barrier to achieve health for all.
• The brain drain is very high in rural settings and public health system.

8. Conclusion
• There has been a tremendous increase in the capacity building and training
mechanism for health professionals due to the private sector. There is a need
to tap this mechanism by proper quality control on medical education.
• The distribution pattern of doctors, dentists, nurses and midwifes has been
same on the other hand there has been increase in numbers of trained
professional per year.
• Rural and economically disadvantage area lack trained workforce and often
their health is dependent on untrained people.