Jalpaiguri Government Medical College and Hospital is a government medical school located in Jalpaiguri, in the northern part of the Indian state of West Bengal. It is one of the medical colleges established by the Government of West Bengal to expand undergraduate medical education and tertiary healthcare services in the northern districts of the state.
| Name | Jalpaiguri Government Medical College and Hospital |
|---|---|
| Type | Government medical college |
| Location | Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, India |
| Owner | Government of West Bengal |
| Academic discipline | Medicine |
The institution was set up to serve the healthcare and medical-education needs of Jalpaiguri district and the wider North Bengal region, which includes the districts of Cooch Behar, Alipurduar and Darjeeling. North Bengal has historically depended on a small number of tertiary care centres, and successive expansion plans by the state government have included new government medical colleges attached to existing district or referral hospitals.
Like other state-run medical colleges in West Bengal, the college is administered under the Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of West Bengal, and operates an attached teaching hospital that provides outpatient, inpatient, emergency and specialist services to the public.
The college offers undergraduate medical education leading to the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree. Admissions to the MBBS programme are conducted through the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG), with state-quota seats allocated by the West Bengal counselling authority. Medical education in India is regulated by the National Medical Commission (NMC), which prescribes the curriculum, infrastructure norms and intake capacity for recognised medical colleges.
The attached teaching hospital functions as a referral facility for patients from Jalpaiguri and surrounding areas. It provides services across core clinical departments such as general medicine, general surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, otorhinolaryngology, and the pre- and para-clinical disciplines that support undergraduate teaching.
The establishment of the college is part of a broader effort to decentralise tertiary medical care in West Bengal, reducing the need for patients in the northern districts to travel to Kolkata or Siliguri for advanced treatment. It also contributes to increasing the number of MBBS seats available to students from the state.