Direction: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

India is currently undertaking one of the largest vaccination programmes in the world. In the first phase, frontline workers were administered doses of the vaccine, followed by senior citizens in the second phase. At the time of the commencement of the programme’s Phase 3, a total of 6.43 crore doses had been administered. At the same time, 6.44 crore doses (close to 50 percent) of vaccines made in India had been exported to over 84 countries. Although the export of vaccines was stopped, India went on to face a severe vaccine crunch in April. A month later, the problem has only got worse.

At the same time, the reported number of daily cases are a little less than three lakh. The country is grappling with problems ranging from insufficient hospital beds, ICUs, and ventilators to shortages in oxygen supply, resulting in a high number of deaths, with more than 4,000 deaths being reported daily. Amidst all this chaos, what has not received sufficient notice is the contribution of health workers, the Covid warriors who have been working tirelessly round the clock for over a year. A further surge in cases across the country could ultimately lead to overburdening these workers. Besides treating Covid patients, they will also have to administer vaccines, now available to the country’s entire adult population.

For several decades, India has been a major exporter of healthcare workers to developed nations particularly to the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Europe, and other English-speaking countries. And this is part of the reason for the shortage of nurses and doctors. As per government reports, India has 1.7 nurses per 1,000 population and a doctor to patient ratio of 1:1,404 — this is well below the WHO norm of three nurses per 1,000 population and a doctor to patient ratio of 1:1,100. But, this does not convey the entire problem. The distribution of doctors and nurses is heavily skewed against some regions. Moreover, there is a high concentration in some urban pockets. If we look at the figures for countries where we export our healthcare workers, we see just how big the difference is between the sending and the receiving countries.