the health workforce actually available in india could be just over half of what is estimated by the government though migration of healthcare workers abroad is often cited as one of the foremost reasons for shortage of personnel about a quarter of medically qualified persons available in india are out of the labour force according to a just published studyinstead of 58 million health workers as shown in the national health workforce account nhwa 2018 the active health workforce could be as low as 31 million as estimated in the nsso periodic labour force survey of 201718 concluded the study done by public health researchers at the indian institute of public health in delhi that was published on mondaygovernment calculations are usually made on the basis of registration of health professionals with the various councils but these registers do not reflect those who migrated died or did not join the workforce thus the stock data in the nhwa does not reflect the actual availability dr anup karan the corresponding author of the study told toithe study also found that a substantial proportion of active health workers were not adequately qualified and hence needed reskilling a large proportion of medically qualified professionals roughly 30 of the nurses and 20 of doctors are not working we also found that a large proportion of those not working are women and mostly over 35 years they dont seem to find the labour market conducive for working said dr karangoing by the nsso estimate the density of human resources for health hrh per 10000 population is just167 61 doctors and106 nurses which does not meet even the absolute minimum who threshold of 23 health workers per 10000 population this threshold was fixed in 200406 linked to one single health service delivery by a skilled birth attendant and hence counted only doctors and nurses the nsso estimate drops to just five doctors and six nurses per 10000 persons after accounting for adequate qualificationsin 2016 who revised the minimum threshold to 445 health professionals per 10000 population taking into account a broader range of health services and the potential contribution of different types of health workers beyond doctors nurses or midwives according to the study the projected skilled health workforce numbers will rise from 177 million to 265 million in 2030 yet india will be short of 11 million health workers in 2030 to reach even the threshold of 25 health workers per 10000 the density will be 175 per 10000 population in 2030 the study suggests a scaleup of nursing supply to approximately 200 growth by 2030 to touch 202 million nurses by then could push the total workforce to 345 million or 2276 skilled personnel per 10000the focus is on enhancing production but the government must also invest to encourage those out of the workforce to join even if 50 of these professionals come back it will be a big boost said dr karan