Out of the 157 new nursing colleges to be established in 27 states of the country, Meghalaya will have one in Tura, West Garo Hills district.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi today approved setting up of new nursing colleges at a cost of Rs. 1570 crores in co-location with existing medical colleges established since 2014.
Besides Meghalaya, one each will be established in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram and Sikkim. Among the North Eastern states, Assam gets the maximum with five nursing colleges to be established in Kokrajhar, Dhubri, Nagaon North, Lakhimpur and Diphu and Nagaland with two in Kohima and Mon.
The initiative aims to address the geographical and rural-urban imbalances in the healthcare sector, which have led to the skewed availability of nursing professionals and impacted healthcare services in underserved areas. The establishment of these nursing colleges will provide a significant boost to the availability of qualified human resources in healthcare. This is also being done as a part of the national mandate for Universal Health Care (UHC) and will help in attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Reforms in regulatory structure for Nursing education to meet with the emerging requirements in the sector are also under consideration.
National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) also collaborates with leading International & National agencies for skill development and placement of qualified nurses for overseas positions.
Co-location of these nursing colleges with existing medical colleges will allow optimal utilization of the existing infrastructure, skill labs, clinical facilities, and faculty.
This initiative is expected to provide better clinical exposure to nursing students and will also result in better care and service provision for patients in medical colleges. Use of green technologies will also be explored in these Nursing colleges and will be adopted as per relevancy to ensure energy efficiency and reduction in carbon footprint.
The government plans to complete the project within next two years and has laid out detailed timelines for every stage of planning as well as execution of the project.
The Empowered Committee headed by the Union Health Secretary in the Centre and Principal Secretary, Medical Education in the States will monitor the progress of the work. The State Government and UTs will intimate to MoHFW on regular basis, the physical progress of the works being done for the establishment of new nursing colleges under the scheme.
