UNQUALIFIED HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS AND RURAL PUBLIC HEALTH IN RAJASTHAN

There are many players for health care delivery systems like public and private providers. In between, another service delivery system exists and survived at large scale in rural India. One of them is called Rural Medical Practitioner or quacks or Jhola Chaap (unqualified service provider) or unethical practitioner. The term RMP is still not clear. In the lay men language, RMP stands for registered medical practitioner but only graduate in MBBS are registered by the Medical Council of India and has a valid licence to practices allopathic medicine in public health. In the medical world. In many developing countries like India, informal or rural medical practitioner provides the large-scale services to the poor and villagers. These practitioners cater a large population especially in rural India. In Rajasthan, the coverage of population by Government Public Health Services is not sufficient. This study carried out with interviewing 117 unqualified health care providers in rural area of Rajasthan. The current paper discusses about academic background, training, experience, daily patient load and practice of informal health care providers altering the unavailable health care professional for a long time. As resulted, a total of 95 (81.20%) informal health care providers have their own clinic where they attend the patients and provide services 24 x 7 without charging consultation fee, go for home visits to see the patient and refer the patients in critical situation to Government health facilities, etc. The strong presence of these so-called rural practitioners in the basket of private health care system put the rural health in very critical situations.