Most AIIMS graduates head abroad for practice
Are there more AIIMS graduates practising in the US than in India? A recent study of AIIMS alumni over 40 years seems to indicate this.
More than half of all the students who passed out from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, from the time it was started in 1956 to 1997, have left the country and settled abroad. Nearly 90% of these emigrant doctors opted for the US.
These startling facts have been revealed in a study carried out by Media Studies Group (MSG).
They collected information about the whereabouts of AIIMS alumni from the The AIIMSonians Directory and crosschecked it with the Encyclopaedic Directory of the AIIMSonians of America (AOA).
Established in 1982, AOA is a registered non-profit outfit having around 750 members from all over North America.
According to the study, 2,129 students, comprising 42 batches, have passed out of AIIMS since 1956. MSG could authenticate information regarding the work place of 1,477 of these ex-students.
The data shows that the period between 1956 and 1997 exhibited distinct phases as far as choice of workplace was concerned. In the first 15 years a very high proportion, 87% of the qualifying students chose to settle abroad.
However, in subsequent phases, the share declined to about 40 to 50% in general. In the 1990s, practically all the graduating students who went abroad settled in the US, according to the study.
However, a closer look reveals that the whereabouts of a lesser number of alumni are known for these years, than for the earlier period.
As per the MSG study, 611 (41%) students opted to remain in India. Of these, over two thirds continued to work in Delhi.
The four metros Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata together became home to 71% of AIIMS pass outs, indicating that few of these elite graduates wanted to provide their services in smaller cities and towns. In India, there are only 60 doctors per 100,000 persons, compared to around 256 in the US.
Emigration data on doctors, as revealed by the MSG study, is bound to add fuel to the persistent controversy
regarding waste of national resources.
Dr Amit Sengupta, joint convener of the public interest NGO federation Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, says the US effectively receives a subsidy of about Rs 25 lakh for every Indian doctor opting to settle down there.
He claimed that there were around 50,000 Indian doctors in the US, 20,000 in the Gulf and 40,000 in the National Health Service of UK.