Optimising the involvement of private practitioners in tuberculosis care and control in India

Abstract

Majority of Tuberculosis (TB) patients in India seek care from Private Practitioners (PPs) whose practices are sub-optimal leading to medical complications. Government of India is involving PPs in National TB Programme (NTP) through PPM (Public Private Mix) schemes to provide correct and timely TB treatment to patients. But, the uptake of PPM schemes by PPs is poor. Hence to understand ‘how’ partnerships with PPs work (or do not), we designed a model to improve PPs involvement in referral of TB cases to NTP. PPs were allocated to intervention or control group. Intervention PPs referred 548 cases during the intervention period of 12 months, as compared to 169 from control group. We demonstrated the effectiveness of involvement of PPs in NTP in field settings and systemic impediments of involving PPs in public health programmes.