The Union Health Ministry on Monday signed an agreement with Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) as part of its attempt to train 14 lakh youth in healthcare sector over the next four years to meet the growing demand for skilled professionals, Health Minister said.

"We aim to train over 14 lakh professionals ... Health Ministry already has a very strong collaboration with Ministry of Skill Development through a MoU which was signed in 2015 and had launched ‘Skills for Life, Save a Life' initiative in June 2017," he said in a tweet. Under the initiative, 10 short term training programmes have been launched in the health sector, while 2,700 First Responders have been trained across 12 states, and over 200 master trainers and 35 state Government Training Institutes oriented to run such courses. The agreement signed for skilling the country's youth in healthcare programmes will be a big support for the Modi government's flagship healthcare programme Ayushman Bharat which aims to establish 150,000 Health and Wellness Centres across the country.

"Almost 14 lakh trained manpower will be available during next four years for the health sector," the Health Ministry tweeted. Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said: "Skill development in India is moving with great speed and scale and this has only been possible with the support of our partner ministries.

"The vision of our Prime Minister of Ayushman Bharat will only be possible through the creation of a large qualified, skilled and competent healthcare workforce. The courses are mostly in preventive and tertiary care sector and it needs a lot of practical training."The courses under Skill India will ensure that the programmes have a defined curriculum which will yield maximum quality benefit to candidates training in them. All the courses under this initiative are aligned to National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF).

"The MoU aims to scale up the healthcare programs and create trained and quality personnel in the healthcare sector. The MoU also envisages setting up of dedicated cell for developing, implementing and certifying NSQF aligned skill-based programmes at IGNOU," Pradhan said.