CHENNAI: The state is awaiting approval from the National Medical Commission to start undergraduate medical programmes in the 11 newly constructed medical colleges from 2021, health secretary J Radhakrishnan said on Tuesday.
If the state gets the nod, it will add 1,650 seats to the undergraduate seat matrix, pushing the seat tally to 5,200 across government medical colleges.
The government has already appointed faculty and staff and work on construction of buildings has been expedited.
“As per the NMC guidelines, we have made the campus ready for first-year admissions.
We are waiting for the committee to visit these campuses for inspection,” he said.
The committee is likely to come for inspection next month.
“If they find any discrepancies, we will rectify them before the second inspection,” he said after a meeting with members of Tamil Nadu Medical Council.
The meeting was chaired by health minister Ma Subramanian.
As part of the national mission to increase the number of medical colleges across the country, the Centre had granted permission to Tamil Nadu for commencement of 11 new medical colleges in districts in Ramanathapuram, Virudhunagar, Dindigul, The Nilgiris, Ariyalur, Nagapattinam, Kallakurichi, Tiruvallur, Tiruppur, Namakkal and Krishnagiri.
The state, he said, was confident of getting their nod for all colleges.
The anatomy, physiology and biochemistry labs, library, hostels required for first year students have been completed.
Tamil Nadu has allotted 2,470.93 crore during the interim budget in 2021 for these colleges.
With this, most districts in the state will have at least one government medical college.
Besides increasing the number of seats, these colleges will help expand tertiary care to districts.
The new medical colleges will help the health department provide quality medical training at affordable cost and offer speciality and super speciality care to people living in the area free of cost.
“We are ensuring that the functioning 700-750 bed hospitals attached to these colleges have all the facilities to offer quality care,” he said.
Meanwhile, Subramanian said the doctors have placed their demands for better pay and compensation.
“We know doctors have toiled through the pandemic…Their demand for pay government doctors’ pay hike was made in 2009.
I will discuss the issue with the CM,” he said.