Toward the end of last year, reports emerged that the Liver Foundation, a health NGO in India’s West Bengal state, had started working with local quack doctors. The term “quack,” descended from the Old Dutch word quacksalver, refers to fake or unscrupulous doctors and other snake-oil salesmen, so at first blush this kind of arrangement might sound like a bad idea. But the organization wasn’t employing or taking marching orders from phony doctors or folk-medicine pushers. Instead it had decided that these self-proclaimed practitioners could be leveraged for some actual public health good—by training them in real clinical skills, giving them legitimizing certificates, and using them to better administer basic care on a local level. These underqualified doctors could also serve as vectors, referencing patients to reliable advanced treatment as needed in remote areas. This co-optation of charlatans has been controversial. A number of Indian doctors have deemed the plan a risk to local health and a distraction from better ideas for healthcare provision in the country. But recruiting quacks into basic medical services is probably one of the best things India can do for its health services right now—if only as a stopgap on the way to larger reforms.

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