HALIFAX — The waiting list for a doctor in Nova Scotia has reached a new high of 50,024 — or roughly 5.4 per cent of the province’s population.

The high comes even as the province announced that 319 doctors took on 2,893 patients in the first two months of the government’s patient incentive program, which aims to shorten the waiting list.

Dr. Manoj Vohra, a family doctor and president of Doctors Nova Scotia, tells Global News that the numbers are an indication that the demand is insatiable.

Vohra says recruiting doctors to rural Nova Scotia has always been a challenge, but now the shortage is hitting urban centres like Halifax and Dartmouth while physicians are also burning out.

The Nova Scotia Health Authority was not immediately available to comment on the figures.

Vohra says there are many things the province and the authority have done to help doctors in the province, but more needs to be done.

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