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Table 2 Types of health care practitioners in Sahid Smriti Colony

From: The gendered experience with respect to health-seeking behaviour in an urban slum of Kolkata, India

Informal care

Description

Formal care

Description

Herbalists

Unlicensed traditional medicine men skilled in dispensing herbal medicines

Medical doctors

Qualified allopath with a medical license

Fortune tellers

Illegal practitioners involved in the practice of predicting and giving spiritual explanations about a person’s life

Para-professionals

Medical assistants with a three-year medical training

Shamans

Illegal practitioners involved in healing through magico-religious means

Homoeopaths

Recognised as one of its national systems of medicine by the Indian government

Ritual experts

Priests of the local temple who perform chanting for the well-being of individuals and are not legitimised in the health care system

  

Unlicensed drug dealers & drug stores

Drug sellers who do not hold the registration certificate of a pharmacist (d.pharm) and usually dispense medicines without a doctor’s prescription

  
  1. Source: Based on data collected in the earlier phase of the field study