Graph on Doctors per 1000 in India
About 600,000 physicians are registered to practice in India, although the actual number is probably lower because of emigration and retirements. With a population just above one billion people, the physician-to-population ratio in India is 50-60 per 100,000.
The distribution of practitioners is heavily skewed toward urban areas. The Center for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes estimates the urban physician-to-population ratio at almost six times the rural concentration of physicians. India’s allopathic physicians practice largely as private fee-for-service (FFS) practitioners among the urban middle class—some 250,000,000 people—meaning that the effective physician-to-population ratio among India’s better-off citizens is about 200 per 100,000, approximately the physician concentration in the United Kingdom. This analytic perspective explains why some observers report that “India has enough physicians,” while many Indians, in fact, never receive the services of allopathic physicians at all.
Source: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/524466_3
Read more on the socio-economic profile of India at: http://india-reports.com/summary/socio.aspx
