The Chattisgarh Experience with a Three-Year Course for Rural Health Care Practitioners
Case study
This case study analyzes the reasons for adoption and the implementation process of a key policy in Chhattisgarh state, India, to create a rural cadre of trained physicians in order to address the acute shortage of doctors in the state’s primary health facilities.
The case study addresses the legal hurdles faced and highlights the importance of institutional support structures to provide for grievance procedures and maintain quality standards.
A principal lesson of this case concerns as to how interests of the various stakeholders who had interests in the three-year course are included early in the policy process, namely the anticipated opposition of the medical doctor community represented by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and the interests of the students themselves and their desire to be given appropriate status as medical doctors.