The Hindu : New Delhi News : “90 per cent of private medical practitioners without degrees”

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Friday, May 16, 2008
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“90 per cent of private medical practitioners without degrees”

Staff Reporter

Research report released by the Centre for Community Medicine at AIIMS
‘These practitioners have active associations and networks with diagnostic facilities’

NEW DELHI: Over 90 per cent of private medical practitioners in an urban poor settlement here in the Capital -- where a collaborative research project was conducted -- did not possess formal degrees in any system of medicine, according to a research report released by the Centre for Community Medicine at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences here. The report is part of a multi-country, inter-disciplinary research project titled “Health system reform and ethics: Private practitioners in poor urban neighbourhoods in India, Indonesia and Thailand.”

In India the study was carried out by AIIMS in Delhi and the University of Arhus, Denmark, in Bhubaneswar. Ethnographic research was conducted from June 2004 to June 2007 among 46 private practitioners and 436 households in two poor urban settlements of Midanpuri in Delhi and Beluam Basti in Bhubaneswar. The study found that of the 27 private practitioners in the Capital covered under the study, only four possessed a formal degree to practise while 26 dispensed allopathic medicine. Ninety-two per cent of the households in Delhi cited a doctor in the “jhuggi” as their first preference for treatment and only two cases (registered during two years of field work) visited a government dispensary located around 4 km during this period. These practitioners have active associations and networks with diagnostic facilities. The majority are “trained” outside Delhi and often certificates indicating “Registered Medical Practitioner” are displayed in their clinics although most of these certificate bear no registration number.

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