At 10 a.m. on a Thursday, the 150-bed Government General Hospital in Telangana’s Nagarkurnool district is a beehive of activity. People, from mothers in their 20s to seniors in their 80s, form a queue of about 70 people, each of them clutching their outpatient slips. Outside the diagnostic labs, a slightly smaller queue extends far beyond where the corridor turns. In the duty doctor’s room, a 5x5-metre space, there are two beds, a chair, and a washroom. It is here that medical professionals spend gruelling 24-hour shifts, their bags and tiffin boxes on the beds. The room is not designed for comfort, but for the hard work of healthcare in India.
Some of the doctors here serve as assistant professors at the Nagarkurnool Government Medical College, which is attached to the hospital. These assistant professors, with work experience of about a year of senior residency after three years of post graduation, were recruited in May this year and assigned to various medical colleges across the State, with a particular focus on the eight new ones inaugurated by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao in 2022. This is part of the Telangana government’s ambitious Whitecoat Revolution — a plan to establish one medical college in each of the 33 districts.
This plan is nearly complete, with 26 government medical colleges already operational in the State and eight more set to be inaugurated in the upcoming academic year. While the government appears committed to developing the infrastructure, there is growing concern about the availability of manpower. In many of the new medical colleges, there is a faculty shortage, putting a burden on existing doctors.
