Exploring the strategies for upgrading the rural unqualified health practitioners in West Bengal, India: A knowledge, attitude and practices assessment-based approach

Introduction

Rural Unqualified Health Practitioners (RUHPs) are more common in the village health system in India and other developing countries. They only provides primary care to patients with diarrhea, cough, malaria, dengue, ARI/pneumonia, skin diseases, etc. As they are unqualified so their quality of health practices is substandard and inappropriate to practices.

Objective and contribution

The intention of this work was to assess the Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices (KAP) of diseases among RUHPs and proposing a blueprint of potential intervention strategies for improving their knowledge and practice.

Materials and methods

The study has used a cross-sectional primary data and adopted quantitative approach. For assessment purpose, a composite KAP Score was constructed for two diseases (malaria and dengue).

Results

The study observed that the KAP Score amongst the RUHPs are on average (about 50%) in most of the individual variables and composite scores for malaria and dengue in West Bengal, India. Their KAP score increased with age, level of education, working experiences, type of practitioners, using android mobile, work satisfaction, organization membership, attending RMP/Government workshop, heard WHO/IMC treatment protocol.

Conclusion

The study suggested multistage interventions includes targeting young practitioners, allopathic and homeopathic quack, launching ubiquitous app-based medical-learning, and government-sponsored workshop should be significant interventions to improve the level of knowledge, change positive attitudes, and adhere to standard health practice.