August 14, 2025

NEW DELHI: Hold your breath! A massive wave of doctors is fleeing from the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) across India. Government data reveals a whopping 429 doctors resigned from 20 AIIMS institutes between 2022 and 2024. The biggest hit? AIIMS Delhi, the crown jewel, lost 52 doctors! Following closely are AIIMS Rishikesh with 38 resignations, AIIMS Raipur 35, AIIMS Bilaspur 32, and AIIMS Mangalagiri 30. This exodus comes at a time when AIIMS hospitals are already gasping under a severe faculty shortage. Can you imagine? Almost one out of every three faculty posts is empty across all 20 AIIMS centers! AIIMS Delhi alone has 462 vacant faculty positions out of 1,306 sanctioned posts—that’s 35% left without teachers and doctors! AIIMS Bhopal and Bhubaneswar also have huge gaps, with 23% and 31% vacancies respectively. It’s not just doctors—many crucial non-faculty positions like nurses and OT technicians remain unfilled. To tackle this crisis, the government recently told Parliament it has started hiring retired professors on contract, allowing them to serve until 70 years old in new AIIMS. There’s also a new visiting faculty scheme letting professors from government and even international institutions to teach temporarily. But is this enough? A senior AIIMS doctor who recently moved to the private sector shared the bitter truth. “Over the last few years, focus has shifted towards improving the services and often we receive complaints about the lack of ‘protected time’ to carry out research, which is an important reason for the brain drain,” the doctor said. And the money gap is huge! Salaries in private hospitals are four to ten times higher than what AIIMS offers. This brain drain alarms healthcare experts who fear that without urgent action, India’s top medical institutes will struggle both to teach and treat patients. Will the government spice up salaries and work conditions to keep their best doctors? Only time will tell, but the doctor exodus from AIIMS is ringing loud warning bells for the nation’s health system.

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Tags: Aiims doctors resignation, Faculty vacancy, Brain drain, Government hospitals, Private sector salaries,