Health Minister Basnet: Medical Education Act will be amended

Kathmandu: Minister for Health and Population Mohan Bahadur Basnet has asserted that the Medical Education Act would be amended at the earliest.

Minister Basnet said this while inaugurating the Chandenimandan health post building at Mandandeupur Municipality-10 in Kavrepalanchok. On the occasion, he said the government would create a situation within the country itself in which students would not have to go abroad for training as doctors and nurses by paying hefty amounts of money.

'We will start the work that has been pending for years. We will also make arrangements for employment along with education within the country itself,' he said, adding that the government will now systematize the situation in which on the one hand the female health volunteers in the villages have to always work as volunteers and the brain drain of doctors and nurses who have completed their studies spending millions of rupees to foreign countries on the other. According to him, 48,000 nurses and 5,000 doctors are required in the country at present.

'There are approved positions for 31,000 nurses and nearly 1,000 doctors so far,' the Health Minister said, pointing out the inadequate positions for doctors and nurses in the country. He said the medical equipment required for the health posts would be made available to them within two months.

Mandandeupur Municipality mayor Tok Bahadur Waiba shared on the occasion that the municipality has set up health centers at local Chandenidanda and Rampur as well as managed the infrastructures, health workers, and medicines there for providing health services to the people of the remote settlements.

He urged the Health Minister to facilitate in upgrading the Jogitar-based health post into a health center.

Deputy Mayor Bishnu Mani Nepal said the Municipality had been providing health services from the two buildings constructed with support from the Korean Red Cross after the health post building was partly damaged by the 2015 earthquake, but now they have been successful in constructing a new well-equipped building from the assistance provided by the Government of India.

On the occasion, Bishnu Mani Nepal, Pitambar Nepal, and Ram Prasad Nepal, who provided land for the construction of the health post buildings, were felicitated by presenting them with a Letter of Appreciation.

RSS