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Hyderabad: Telangana continues to face a shortage of nurses, despite recruiting over 10,000 of them in the past two years. The state has reportedly fallen below World Health Organisation (WHO) standards as its workforce remains 47 per cent below the norm.
As per the data presented in the Rajya Sabha by Union Health Minister J P Nadda, Telangana currently has 60,919 registered nurses and registered midwives (RN&RM).
Against the state’s estimated 2026 population of nearly 3.9 crore, this results in just 1.58 nurses per 1,000 people, far below the WHO recommendation of three nurses per 1,000 people and the national average of 2.45.
According to the report, Telangana outperforms Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand among larger states. However, the southern state trails Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and every other southern state. Kerala has the highest nurse-population ratio at 10.47, followed by Karnataka (7.69), Andhra Pradesh (5.72), Delhi (5.18) and Tamil Nadu (5.09).
According to a Times of India report, health experts said that Telangana’s recruitment drive has helped fill vacancies in government hospitals. However, it has not been in line with the rapid expansion of healthcare facilities, including new government medical colleges, district hospitals and super-speciality services.
According to the Telangana Nurses Association, government hospitals face a shortage of nurses. “As per norms, a 100-bed hospital requires around 45 nurses. Before the formation of Telangana, govt hospitals had around 17,000 beds and about 13,000 nurses,” a TNA source was quoted as saying by TOI.
They added that presently the number of government hospital beds has increased to over 28,000. However, nurse recruitment has not increased proportionately.
“The state still needs another 6,000 to 7,000 nurses in govt hospitals alone,” the source said.
This post was last modified on August 27, 2026 11:38 am