Admitting that the Primary Health Centres (PGCs) badly required more doctors to provide adequate health care in villages, Union Minister for Health A Ramadoss told the Rajya Sabha that the government was alive to the problem and was trying to introduce a law under which fresh graduates would not be registered unless they put in at least a year's service in rural areas.

Replying to supplementaries during the Question Hour, the minister said that at present there were 23,000 primary health centres in the country against 16,000 doctors available for them. However, he said, under the recently launched Rural Health Mission, facilities at the PHCs would undergo a sea change with the addition and upgradation of a number of facilities.

The PHCs will have physicians trained in both Indian and allopathic system of medicines, he said.

Besides, the government was recruiting 2,50,000 accredited social health activsits (ASHAs) to expand and strengthen the rural health care system, he added.

Family planning will be an important component of the Rural Health Mission programmes and schemes, the minister said.