The Centre administration had sanctioned Karnataka's plan to augment the total of MBBS seats in government-run medical colleges by 500.

In addition to this, the government has also added up about 350 post-graduate seats in them.

Medical Education Minister S A Ramadass, who came back from a two-day meet of health and medical education functionaries in Hyderabad, made this declaration on Friday.

Mr. Ramadass stated that with the said increase, the total number of MBBS seats in 10 Government medical colleges would touch 1600 as against 1100 at the moment.

He also said that this is the first time, when the government has allocated 100 PG seats in six government medical colleges situated in Bidar, Belgaum, Hassan, Raichur, Mandya, and Shimoga and 250 additional in other four medical colleges, lifting up the total post graduation seats to 694 in Karnataka.

The Medical Education Minister added that the government has also taken over the state's proposal to carryout examination in MBBS after a period of four-and-half-years and then have an obligatory one-year internship in rustic regions.

This would make improvements in the Medical Council of India syllabus in this regard to be applicable to the whole country.

The Union administration has decided to promote the SDS Sanatorium and Chest Diseases Hospital in the state into a national institute, for which Karnataka would make a project report and would have to offer up seed money of 10%.

The minister also said that a conference of standing committee on health of city corporations, municipalities and zilla panchayats would be arranged soon with the aim to talk about measures to put control over the spread of communicable diseases like malaria, dengue, chikungunya and filaria.