Public Health to practice in the State/Union Territory so as to overcome the dearth of manpower of doctors in rural areas. • The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare will explore the possibility of diluting/relaxing their norms to make way for Public-Private Partnership between Government Hospitals and Private Medical Colleges. • All district hospitals in the country should have nursing colleges to address the shortage of nurses, especially in remote areas. The Commission also recommends to the Planning Commission to provide more funds to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for the establishment of 230 nursing colleges at the district level. • The Nursing Council has listed 14 specialties for the 'Nurse Practitioners Course', out of which syllabi for nine have been finalized. The Council should finalize the syllabi of the remaining specialties to ensure availability of specialists like Nurse Anaesthetists and Gynaecologists in rural areas. • MCI will create more awareness among medical colleges about the need for PostGraduate courses in Psychiatry to cover the lack of manpower in the field. 7.9 Subsequently, the Commission elaborated on the issue of rural attachment to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare as follows: MBBS doctors should undergo one year of compulsory rural service at Primary Health Centres, in addition to their regular internship. In order to facilitate this process, they should be given provisional registration to practice after they have completed their MBBS. The permanent registration and degree should be given to them only after they have completed their one year of compulsory rural service. From the point of ensuring that there is no increase in the number of years of MBBS course, the compulsory rural service should be made one of the essential pre-requisites to qualify for post-graduation. The Commission also recommended that to improve the emergency medical services in the country, there is a need to develop 'Emergency Medicine' as a specialty. Follow-up of NHRC Recommendations 7.10 The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare informed the Commission that it had initiated steps to address the lack of manpower in the Health sector. Hospitals/health centers could now take the services of doctors on a contract basis and the number of staff nurses had been increased to three at PHCs. 7.11 The Ministry also informed the NHRC that there is a special focus on training MBBS students in Anaesthesia and Gynaecology. And that there are now specifically designed six-month training courses on 'emergency handling and anaesthesia'. In consonance with the recommendations of the Commission, the Planning Commission too has approved a sum of Rs. 15,000 crores to strengthen National Human Rights Commission 93