Trained village doctors can make a difference : Studies

FE Team | Published: January 03, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

It is possible to ensure healthcare facilities in rural areas through grooming up village doctors providing them with proper education and training, according to new studies, reports UNB.
Two new icddr,b studies find that better education, training and access to information are needed to improve the quality of care provided by village doctors.
One of the studies conducted by Dr Ahmed S Rahman and his colleagues from icddr,b's Centre for Nutrition and Food Security found that adequate training of village doctors and other informal health providers can lead to a larger gain against diarrhoeal disease.
It shows that adequate training and inclusion into larger health programmes can successfully utilise the potentials of village doctors and finds that training of doctors by local NGOs significantly increased zinc usage during diarrhoeal disease for children in a rural communities.
Trained village doctors and other unlicensed health service providers have also been utilised successfully in the national tuberculosis programme in the country, and similar examples can be found from other developing countries, the study says.
The village doctors who are not medically qualified but informal community-based healthcare providers play a crucial role in providing health services in Bangladesh, a country with a serious shortage of trained health professionals.
Village doctors constitute the largest segment of healthcare providers in the country - an estimated 13 of them per 10,000 people-treating a full range of health problems. They work in remote rural communities often out of the reach of the formal health system.
In another study, Dr Mohammad Iqbal, Dr Abbas Bhuiya and his other colleagues from icddr,b's Centre of Equity and Health Systems examined the relationship between village doctors and medical representatives of pharmaceutical companies, and find that medical representatives exert a strong influence on the prescribing habits of village doctors.
It found that lack of training and access to credible medical information are the biggest hurdle to the work of village doctors.
Since they lack opportunities to learn about new medications, village doctors often rely on medical representatives of pharmaceutical companies as their principal or even sole source of information.
This leaves them vulnerable to aggressive marketing tactics employed by pharmaceutical companies.
While most village doctors in the study noted that information received from medical representatives was often inaccurate or omitted the harmful side effects of drugs, their lack of access to other sources of information kept them dependent on this contentious source, according icddr,b source.
At the same time, the meager income earned by village doctors leaves them vulnerable to being incentivised by gifts and financial rewards by medical representatives, which can lead to inappropriate or over-prescription of drugs, the study says.