How to optimise the involvement of qualified private practioners in Tuberculosis care and control in India: An analysis of Public Private Mix – DOTS in India

In India, the private health sector plays a dominant role. Government of India (GoI) has been trying to involve the Private Sector Providers (PSPs) through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in realising the public health goals. However, the assessment offew successful PPPs reveal that, they are context specific and they do not inform us aboutunder ‘what’ conditions they work successfully. Given this context, we propose to study PPP in TB control in Karnataka as a case study to understand the dynamics of PPPs in India. Since 1995, GoI has made systematic effortsto involve PSPs in theRevised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP) through PPM-DOTS strategy.However, existing literature shows that, despite the promise shown by PPM models,uptake of PPM schemes by PSPs has been poor and we do not know much about the context and the factors determining the performance of PPM-DOTS.Hence, we propose to study and understand ‘what determines the performance of PPM-DOTS in India’ and also to know ‘how’ and ‘why’ certain PPMs work or fail.The proposed study will be done using the mixed methods. There will be an initial quantitative data analysis of existing PPMs, followed by case study approach of the selected successful and unsuccessful PPMs.