Karachi: Pakistan is rapidly losing a growing number of young doctors to foreign countries as limited postgraduate training opportunities at home continue to push medical graduates abroad, with regulators warning that the real crisis lies not in the number of doctors but in the country’s inability to train and retain them.
The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council has flagged a widening gap between the annual output of medical graduates and the number of available residency training positions, describing it as a key driver of the accelerating brain drain of healthcare professionals.
Over the past two decades, Pakistan has significantly expanded its undergraduate medical education, producing thousands of new doctors each year. However, the number of structured and funded postgraduate training slots, particularly in the public sector, has failed to keep pace, leaving a large pool of graduates competing for limited positions.
Officials say that for many young doctors, the lack of training opportunities translates directly into stalled careers, forcing them to seek residency and specialization pathways in countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, the Gulf states and Australia.
Health experts warn that this trend is steadily weakening Pakistan’s healthcare system, as the country invests heavily in producing doctors but fails to retain them at the stage where they acquire specialist skills and contribute meaningfully to patient care and medical education.
The PM&DC has cautioned that the bottleneck in postgraduate training is now one of the most critical structural issues in the health sector, with implications not only for workforce planning but also for the availability of specialists in key disciplines.
According to the council, provincial health departments, which are responsible for funding and managing public sector hospitals, must urgently expand postgraduate training capacity. Most accredited residency programmes are currently concentrated in tertiary care hospitals, limiting access and creating intense competition among applicants.
The council has recommended a phased but substantial increase in residency positions, potentially doubling the number of training slots in line with the output of medical graduates and the evolving healthcare needs of provinces.
It has also urged the upgradation of district and tehsil headquarters hospitals into accredited training centres, a move that could decentralise training, improve service delivery in underserved areas and create more opportunities for young doctors within the country.
Experts say that without clear and merit based career pathways linked to postgraduate training, Pakistan will continue to lose its most talented graduates to better organised health systems abroad.
They warn that the continued outflow of doctors is not only a loss of human capital but also a financial setback, as the country effectively subsidises medical education only to see its workforce strengthen foreign healthcare systems.
The PM&DC maintains that expanding postgraduate training is essential to reversing this trend, improving retention of doctors and ensuring that Pakistan’s growing pool of medical graduates is translated into a stronger and more self sufficient healthcare system.