The scale was developed using in-depth interviews and focus group discussions among policy makers, managers, practitioners, village health volunteers, and clients.
· Interventions investigated were provided by primary care workers including general practitioners, village doctors, or nurses, to improve the management of hypertension in the community.
In addition, traditional birth attendants, unqualified allopathic practitioners (village doctors and drugstore salesmen) and homeopath practitioners had an estimated density of 33.2, 23.9 and 5.9 per 10 000 population, respectively.
Informal Allopathic Practitioners (IAP) (village doctors and medicine shopkeepers) were those practicing allopathic medicine but were not qualified to diagnose or treat patients.
They blamed a range of practitioners, from village doctors and 'quacks', to the medical representatives of smaller companies promoting their products unethically.
Most (43% of all visits) of the unqualified (non-medically qualified) practitioners were village doctors or "quacks", many of whom had received some paramedical training.
All other health facilities in this county including township health centers, private practitioners and village health stations are responsible for referring TB suspects to the county TB dispensary, and smear microscopy tests and anti-tuberculosis medicines are not available in these facilities.
A feature of health services use in Bangladesh is the continuing move away from government services towards private practitioners, and particularly unqualified practitioners (so-called "village doctors" or "quacks").
When this first action was not effective, the majority of women sought advice from a health facility, with over 50% seeking advice from a private clinic or government hospital in KPC or Phnom Penh, and one-third attending the health clinic or a private practitioner in the village.
I'm a doctor, my son is a doctor and my father was a doctor -- a country practitioner in the villages of Arab Palestine and my model for what a good physician should be...
