New Delhi: The Medical Council of India (MCI) on Friday proposed setting up of 300 medical colleges to provide education to rural students and deploy them there to provide basic health care facilities to villagers.

"There are around 300 districts in our country where there are no medical colleges and we have proposed a medical college in each of these districts," MCI president Ketan Desai told reporters here.

"These medical colleges will provide a course named 'Bachelors in Rural Health Care'. After being trained, they will be posted in notified rural areas.

"These doctors will study in rural areas and work in rural areas for life. They will be governed by state medical council but will not be registered under the Indian Medical registry," Desai further said.

With the people-doctor ratio six times lower in rural India than cities, the central government on Thursday said it would produce 145,000 rural doctors through a truncated medical course designed after the Chinese "barefoot doctors". IANS