The health workforce is critical to achieve health and wider development objectives in the next decades. Health systems can only function with health workers. The mere availability of health workers is not sufficient; health workers need to be equitably distributed and accessible, possess the required competency, and are motivated and empowered to deliver quality care translating into effective service coverage [1]. An analysis conducted by the Global Health Workforce Alliance and World Health Organization estimated a gap of 7.2 million professional health workers in 2012, which is set to rise to 12.9 million over the next decades. Countries at all levels of socio-economic development face the challenge of how to sustain the human capital for guaranteeing universal access and universal health coverage [2].
Along with the shortage of other human resources, there is a marked misdistribution of doctors and medical specialists across the states in India. An imbalance between the urban and the rural distribution of doctors is also evident with 74% of the trained doctors practicing in the urban areas whereas 72% of the Indian population resides in the rural and remote areas [2].
Medical specialists are scarce in India, and the numbers are disproportionately lower in the public sector, at the Community Health Centre (CHC) level and above. Even district hospitals in several states have an acute shortage of medical specialists. At the country level, we continue to face a shortage of specialists even when we consider the total number of specialists in the country.