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India is a diverse and huge country which is reflected in its unique healthcare system. It is a mix of for-profit and not for profit providers and public and private facilities which range from purely outpatient based to having thousands of specialist beds with five star facilities attracting international medical tourists. There are also a number of unregistered medical practitioners who practice medicine in a variety of different ways from prescribing medicines to offering treatments based on exercises to spirituality. There are various streams of medicine- allopathic, homeopathy, complementary and alternative medicine including Ayurveda and Unani which are practiced routinely. Drugs (and Herbal products) are also available over the counter without prescriptions in shops and sometimes even on the streets. Efforts to reform and improve this complex healthcare system have been going on since a long time. This book attempts to summarise this complex information on health system with the underlying theme of understanding the preference in choices of consumers. This evidence would be helpful in reaching conclusions on what works and what not.

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Dr Gulrez Shah Azhar is an Erasmus Mundus scholar of European Commission. Before joining PHFI´s Indian Institute of Public Health as faculty he was with WHO in Geneva. His education is MBBS and MD in Community Medicine from the Aligarh Muslim University and MPH from Europe. His publications have appeared in national and international journals.

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