LEFT OUT Just Over a Lakh MBBS Muslims Among 1.29 Million Doctors 

• A total of 3,242 Muslims practice Ayurveda across the country

• 28,061 Unani practitioners are Muslims; only 717 non-Muslims 

• Muslim Homeopathy practitioners stand at 70,027

• No Muslims in the National Medical Commission

• No Muslim doctors in Manipur, Mizoram, and Nagaland

Team Clarion

NEW DELHI – During the past more than a century an unabated craze has been witnessed among the Muslim community to make their wards doctors. Despite this phenomenon, the number of Muslim MBBS doctors stands at 1,04,062 out of a total of 12,99,254 doctors across the country.

As many as 3,242 Muslims are practicing Ayurveda across the country, the highest in Gujarat – 915 – followed by Jammu and Kashmir at 157. Almost all Unani medicine practitioners are Muslims – 28,061 out of a total of 28,778. Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of practitioners – 13,575. Muslim homeopathy practitioners stand at 70,027 out of 2,23,531.     

The number of Muslims in medical-related professional and consultative bodies too is negligible. There is no Muslim among senior members and top management of the National Medical Commission, Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI), and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). There are only two Muslims among the presidents and registrars of States Medical Councils. The Nursing Council of India has 34 officials which includes a Muslim, according to data shared in a new book, Muslims in India – Ground Reality Verses Fake Narratives – Achievements & Accomplishments.

After India’s first medical college came up in 1835 at Calcutta, the country had only 19 medical colleges with around 1,000 MBBS seats at the time of Independence. The Medical Council of India (MCI) was set up in 1934 as the regulatory agency for medical education. In 1946, there were 47,000 doctors on the medical register of undivided India, of which 13,000 were on government payrolls. There were on average less than two doctors per government institution. 

Less than 2.5 per cent of villages had doctors practicing modern medicine. There was one nurse to 43,000 of the population, there being 7,000 nurses in all. After Independence came the Indian Medical Council through an Act of Parliament in 1956. The number of medical colleges increased to 143 by 1990, mostly in the government domain. From 2010 onwards, private sector dominance in medical education had become new normal. By 2010, the private sector not only had more medical colleges but also a higher student intake than the public sector, making financial capacity a crucial factor in accessing medical education in India.  

From 2010 onwards, private sector dominance in medical education had become the new normal. In 2017, there were 479 medical colleges in India with an admission capacity of over 60,000 at the undergraduate level. In 2019, the government addressed the long-standing demand to reform medical education by dismantling the MCI and establishing a new institution, the National Medical Commission (NMC). The following year, the NMC started creating the Indian Medical Registry offering a search engine to check names and other details of the registered doctors with the various State Medical Councils across India up to 2021 when the number of medical colleges reached 648, with 357 government-run and the remaining 291, or about 45 per cent operating in the private sector.

Private colleges increased by 625 per cent, from 41 to 291, between 1990 and 2021, whereas government-run medical colleges increased by 250 per cent, from 102 to 357. Now, India has 1,48,042 seats a year available for various types of allopathic medical courses. Of these, MBBS has 98,938 seats (52,123 in government and 46,815 in private institutions) and the MD/MS courses have 44,114 seats (25,910 in government and 18,204 in private sector). The intake for super-specialist education was 9,468 in 2021. On average, India has one medical college for every 21 lakh people and one MBBS seat for 14,000 people.  The Hyderabad Medical Council had a total of 12,157 doctors including 2,277 Muslims between 1960 and 1989. Andhra Pradesh Medical Council between 1960 and 2022 has on its rolls 93,324 doctors including 6,675 Muslims. 

The Indian Medical Council Act 1956 prohibits a person other than a medical practitioner enrolled on a State Medical Register or the Indian Medical Register (IMR) from practicing in the country. Every new medical graduate must register with the respective State Medical Council and is then allocated a registration number. With this registration number, one can practice anywhere in the country. Currently, apart from MCI’s Indian Medical Register (IMR), various state councils have their medical registers. The MCI then compiles data received from state medical councils as healthcare is a State subject. The MCI has no way of tracing, tracking, and weeding out fake practitioners from genuine doctors working in the country. The patients also have no way of differentiating between genuine and fake doctors. 

In 2017 the Medical Council of India directed all states to provide a unique permanent registration number (UPRN) to every doctor registered in their jurisdiction. The NMC Act of 2019 mandates electronic synchronisation of the national and state register in a manner that any change in one register is automatically reflected in the other. A federated architecture design has been recommended for the National Doctors Registry to keep it updated at all times and will not have a single point of failure.

According to experts, an arbitrary number (80 per cent) of 10.41 lakh doctors are currently practicing in India, a doctor: patient ratio of 0.74:1,000, as of December 2021. The WHO recommendation is a minimum doctor-patient ratio of 1:1,000. Doctors are registered under nine disciples including Unani by five councils in the country. 

In April 2020, it was revealed India has 1.1 million allopathic doctors registered with the Board of Governors, State Medical Councils, and Medical Council as of December 2019. Assuming 80 per cent availability, it is estimated that around 9.26 lakh doctors may be available for active service, according to the data presented in the Lok Sabha. For a population of 1.36 billion, this makes the doctor-population ratio 1:1,457, lower than the WHO’s recommended norm of 1:1,000. For people in rural areas completely dependent on government hospitals and clinics, the government allopathic doctor-patient ratio is 1:10,926.

According to a study by the Indian Institute of Public Health that compared the National Health Workforce Account (NHWA) numbers (taken from the Indian Medical Registry) with the numbers from the Census and the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) of 2018, the number of living and practicing “qualified” doctors is likely 6,75,000 (0.5:1,000), which is availability of just 53 percent of those registered (another 1,48,000 odd are “doctors” but unqualified and likely quacks.

In 2020, there were over 1.2 million doctors registered, up from over 8,27,000 doctors in 2010. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and destination country sources found there were only 4.8 practicing doctors per 10,000 population available in India in 2014, in contrast to the belief of having seven doctors per 10,000 people.  

The number of doctors entered into Indian medical registers annually increased from about 4,066 in 1961, to 14,023 in 1991, 21,263 in 2001, and 33,927 in 2011. Consequently, the accumulated stock of registered doctors expanded from about 75,594 in 1960, to 3,93,424 in 1990, 5,66,102 in 2000, 8,24,673 by 2010, and further to 9,43,529 by 2014. According to the WHO and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India has seven doctors per 10,000 population.  There were 6,00,031 doctors available to practice in India in 2014 to serve its 1,239 million population with a doctor-population ratio of just 4.84 per 10,000 people. It is estimated that the country will be able to achieve a ratio of about 6.9 practicing doctors per 10,000 people only by 2030. 

MBBS doctors registered with State Medical Councils

Registered Practitioners of Ayurveda,  Unani, and  Homeopathy

Professional Councils

To read and obtain more data, Please visit: 

Muslims in India: Achievements & Accomplishments 1947-2024: Mannan, Mohammed Abdul: 9798343270259: Amazon.com: Books

Muslims in India 1947-2024 eBook : Abdul Mannan, Mohammed