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Instead of diminishing with the spectacular advancement of medical expertise in the country , unqualified biomedical practice in India has been strengthened by the growth of the pharmaceutical production in the twenty first century. In public health discourse, the view that the informal health practitioners have to be punished and abolished has been countered by the recommendation that they could be trained and incorporated in primary health care where public health amenities are inadequate. The quality of care provided by the informal health care practitioners has also been subject to clinical assessment based on standardized patient vignettes. Based on a sociological approach, this paper examines the time line of chronically ill patients under lived conditions to arrive at an understanding of the role of informal health practitioners in long term treatment and highlights the setbacks. This paper draws on 253 household surveys from two villages in Madhya Pradesh, in depth interviews with four unqualified practitioners in the area, twenty five unstructured interviews of chronic patients, twenty five structured interviews on the cases of untimely death and FGDs with health workers in 2021. Informal health care practitioners offer consultation cum dispensing of medicines and are the primary source of biomedical care in the remote study area without any public transport. But they are 'for profit' economic actors who are ill-equipped to handle chronic diseases. What sets them aside from the qualified private doctors in the town is their social obligation to balance their profit motive with the ethics of proximity and neighborly ties with the villagers amidst whom they reside. These features of the market and community place the informal health care practitioners at the cusp of economy and society and defy simple binaries that they are either crooks or assets. • Unqualified health practitioners provide medical care in India where none is available. • Assessing their practices, clientele and exact role is crucial to health care policy. • One point standardized patient vignettes are used to assess their quality of care. • Their treatment of chronically and severely ill patients over time also has to be examined. • They are 'for profit' economic actors, but embedded in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was launched in India in 2005 to address the health needs of under-served populations in rural areas, and to support universal access to care. Despite this initiative, unaccredited informal providers (IPs) often remain patients’ first point of contact, which has led to inconsistencies in treatment, and has compromised the quality of care. Aim: To explore the factors that influence patients’ decisions about healthcare providers in rural areas of central India. Methods: Nine focus group discussions (FGDs) were held in nine villages in central India. Framework analysis using an inductive approach was used to analyse the data. Results: The crosscutting theme across the discussions was not choice but need—the need for affordable and accessible health care regardless of the provider’s qualification. Results highlighted that IPs play a pivotal role in villagers’ lives. Formal healthcare services were accessed infrequently, and mainly when a condition was judged severe or possibly even fatal. Even then, affordability was carefully weighed. Villagers’ distance from formal providers contributed to high cost and low preference of formal providers. When opting for IPs, familiarity and trust were more important to villagers than qualifications. IPs have operated in rural communities in India for a long time and have adapted their services to meet the needs, preferences, social norms, and economic conditions of villagers. Conclusion: IPs have captured a niche and are often the first contact point in rural settings even when patients ultimately are diagnosed and treated by trained doctors. Merely tackling the undersupply of qualified doctors is not effective or sufficient to impact on the rural healthcare system: the strong and prevalent influence of IPs needs to be addressed also. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Women in developing countries continue to face barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, with marginalized women facing increased challenges to accessing care. The Diagonal Interventions to Fast-Forward Enhanced Reproductive Health (DIFFER) project implemented a package of interventions for female sex workers and women from the general population which integrated horizontal health services for the general population with existing vertical targeted interventions aimed at sex workers with an aim to improve SRH and HIV services. We present an outcome evaluation of the DIFFER project in terms of uptake rates for SRH services among sex workers in Mysore, India. Methods: Ashodaya Samithi, a sex worker-led organization, implemented the DIFFER strategy through their community-based clinic and a Well Women Clinic (WWC), established at a partner private hospital that provided SRH services for women living with HIV. Mixed methods were used to evaluate the intervention that included a baseline (2012–13) and end of project (2015–16) cross sectional surveys (CSS), focus group discussions (FGDs), key informant interviews, and analysis of service statistics from 2013–2016. Results: The CSS found that condom use, STI testing, and treatment were high before, and throughout the intervention; cervical cancer screening and treatment increased significantly, from 11.5% to 56% (aOR 9.85, p<0.001) and HIV testing in the last 3 months increased from 26.3% to 73.3% (aOR 7.25, p<0.001). The proportion of sex workers using any SRH service in the past year doubled from 25.7% to 51.4% (aOR 2.91, p<0.001). Service statistics showed similar trends. The FGDs and key informant interviews showed that women and stakeholders held high levels of satisfaction with the strategy, and affirmed potential for scale up. Conclusion: The DIFFER strategy demonstrated that SRH service uptake can occur in conjuction with HIV services offered to sex workers. This model of integrated service delivery has been accepted by policy makers and needs further analysis for scaling up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While the gender disparity in health and mortality in various stages of life in India is well documented, there is limited evidence on female disadvantage in health-care expenditure (HCE). Aims: Examine the gender difference in HCE in short-term and major morbidity in India, and understand the role of factors underlying the difference. Data and Methods: Using two rounds of nationally representative panel data—the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2004–2005 and 2011–2012 (IHDS I & II)—we calculate morbidity prevalence rate and mean HCE by gender, and examine the adjusted effect of gender on major morbidity-related HCE by using a two-part regression model. Further, we performed Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of the gender gap in HCE in major morbidity to understand the contribution of demographic and socio-economic factors. Results: Health-care expenditure on females was systematically lower than on males across all demographic and socio-economic groups. Multivariate analysis confirms that female HCE is significantly lower than male HCE even after controlling demographic and socio-economic factors (β = -0.148, p = 0.000, CI:-0.206–0.091). For both short-term and major morbidity, a female disadvantage on HCE increased from IHDS I to IHDS II. For instance, the male–female gap in major morbidity related expenditure increased from INR 1298 to INR 4172. A decomposition analysis of gender gap in HCE demonstrates that about 48% of the gap is attributable to differences in demographic and socio-economic factors (endowment effect), whereas 50% of the gap is due to the differential effect of the determinants (coefficient effect). Interpretation: Indians spend less on female health care than on male health care. Most of the gender gap in HCE is not due to differential distribution of factors affecting HCE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Stigmatising and discriminating attitudes may discourage tuberculosis (TB) patients from actively seeking medical care, hide their disease status, and discontinue treatment. It is expected that appropriate knowledge regarding TB should remove stigmatising and discriminating attitudes. In this study we assessed the prevalence of stigmatising and discriminating attitudes towards TB patients among general population and their association with knowledge regarding TB. Method: A cross-sectional knowledge, attitude and practice survey was conducted in 30 districts of India in January-March 2011. A total of 4562 respondents from general population were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires which contained items to measure stigma, discrimination and knowledge on TB. Result: Of the 4562 interviewed, 3823 were eligible for the current analysis. Of these, 73% (95% CI 71.4–74.2) had stigmatising and 98% (95% CI 97.4–98.3) had discriminating attitude towards TB patients. Only 17% (95% CI 15.6–18.0) of the respondents had appropriate knowledge regarding TB with even lower levels observed amongst females, rural areas and respondents from low income groups. Surprisingly stigmatising (adjusted OR 1.31 (0.78–2.18) and discriminating (adjusted OR 0.79 (0.43–1.44) attitudes were independent of knowledge regarding TB. Conclusion: Stigmatising and discriminating attitudes towards TB patients remain high among the general population in India. Since these attitudes were independent of the knowledge regarding TB, it is possible that the current disseminated knowledge regarding TB which is mainly from a medical perspective may not be adequately addressing the factors that lead to stigma and discrimination towards TB patients. Therefore, there is an urgent need to review the messages and strategies currently used for disseminating knowledge regarding TB among general population and revise them appropriately. The disseminated knowledge should include medical, psycho-social and economic aspects of TB that not only informs people about medical aspects of TB disease, but also removes stigma and discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Equity of access to healthcare remains a major challenge with families continuing to face financial and non-financial barriers to services. Lack of education has been shown to be a key risk factor for 'catastrophic' health expenditure (CHE), in many countries including India. Consequently, ways to address the education divide need to be explored. We aimed to assess whether the innovative state-funded Rajiv Aarogyasri Community Health Insurance Scheme of Andhra Pradesh state launched in 2007, has achieved equity of access to hospital inpatient care among households with varying levels of education. Methods: We used the National Sample Survey Organization 2004 survey as our baseline and the same survey design to collect post-intervention data from 8623 households in the state in 2012. Two outcomes, hospitalisation and CHE for inpatient care, were estimated using education as a measure of socio-economic status and transforming levels of education into ridit scores. We derived relative indices of inequality by regressing the outcome measures on education, transformed as a ridit score, using logistic regression models with appropriate weights and accounting for the complex survey design. Findings: Between 2004 and 2012, there was a 39% reduction in the likelihood of the most educated person being hospitalised compared to the least educated, with reductions observed in all households as well as those that had used the Aarogyasri. For CHE the inequality disappeared in 2012 in both groups. Sub-group analyses by economic status, social groups and rural-urban residence showed a decrease in relative indices of inequality in most groups. Nevertheless, inequalities in hospitalisation and CHE persisted across most groups. Conclusion: During the time of the Aarogyasri scheme implementation inequalities in access to hospital care were substantially reduced but not eliminated across the education divide. Universal access to education and schemes such as Aarogyasri have the synergistic potential to achieve equity of access to healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the process of health transition, India is facing rapid pace of demographic aging. Rapid increase in older adult population posed serious concerns regarding health and health care utilization for them. However, very limited research documented resultant implications of demographic aging for health and health care use in the nexus of marital status and gender. With this perspective, the present study examined patterns in morbidity prevalence and health seeking behaviour among older widows in India. Multivariate logistic regression models were estimated to examine the effects of socio-demographic conditions on morbidity prevalence among older widows and their health care seeking behavior. Data from the latest 60th round of National Sample Survey (NSS), 2004 was used. Overall, morbidity prevalence was 13% greater among older widows compared to older widowers. Adjusted prevalence of communicable and non-communicable diseases was found 74 and 192 per 1000 older widows respectively. At the same time, likelihood of seeking health care services for reported morbidities was substantially lower among older widows. The findings of this study are important to support policy makers and health care providers in identifying individuals ‘at risk’ and could be integrated into the current programs of social, economic and health security for the older persons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Yashoda program, named after a legendary foster-mother in Indian mythology, under the Norway-India Partnership Initiative was launched as a pilot program in 2008 to improve the quality of maternal and neonatal care at facilities in select districts of India. Yashodas were placed mainly at district hospitals, which are high delivery load facilities, to provide support and care to mothers and newborns during their stay at these facilities. This study presents the results from the evaluation of this intervention in two states in India. Methods: Data collection methods included in-depth interviews with healthcare providers and mothers and a survey of mothers who had recently delivered within a quasi-experimental design. Fifty IDIs were done and 1,652 mothers who had delivered in the past three months were surveyed during 2010 and 2011. Results: A significantly higher proportion of mothers at facilities with Yashodas (55 percent to 97 percent) received counseling on immunization, breastfeeding, family planning, danger signs, and nutrition compared to those in control districts (34 percent to 66 percent). Mothers in intervention facilities were four to five times more likely to receive postnatal checks than mothers in control facilities. Among mothers who underwent cesarean sections, initiation of breastfeeding within five hours was 50 percent higher in intervention facilities. Mothers and families also reported increased support, care and respect at intervention facilities. Conclusion: Yashoda as mothers' aide thus seems to be an effective intervention to improve quality of maternal and newborn care in India. Scaling up of this intervention is recommended in district hospitals and other facilities with high volume of deliveries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to timely, quality healthcare is one of the important issues concerning communities in rural India, among many others such as education, safe drinking water, transport, approach roads, and electricity. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has made a significant impact on the functioning of enterprises and urban communities; however, the benefits of ICT are yet to reach rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]