Population growth has been a part of India's concern since a long time which resulted into formulation of many policies and programme. Expansion of access to contraception and reduction of the unmet need for family planning are key components to improve reproductive health. The study aims to access the effect of family planning advice and maternal health care utilization on contraceptive usage in Bihar. Methods: The study used the data from the National Family Health Survey, round 4, (2015-16). Bivariate and multivariate analyses have been employed to examine the factors affecting the contraceptive use among women in Bihar. Results: Majority of the women preferred modern contraceptive methods with female sterilization being the most common among all. More than half of married women received advice on family planning methods but were found to be inconsistent in influencing the contraceptive use. Women who have received proper maternal health care were found to have more likelihood in adopting family planning methods. Age, residence, religion and wealth index are the significant predictors of contraception use. Age and wealth of the women depicted a positive relationship with the contraception use. Interestingly, results suggest that advice on family planning didn't have much effect on birth control in Bihar. Conclusion: The study concludes that more needs to be done to support the need for adequate maternal health care utilization to increase the use of contraception. Efforts are required to ensure that currently married women across socioeconomic backgrounds have an equal opportunity to received maternal health services.

Health-care workforce planning is crucial for active healthcare provision and to achieve an improvement in population health. One of the major challenges in the quest for achieving the goals of the Universal Health Coverage is the shortage of skilled health workers which is a matter of concern for health planners. The paper attempts to project the future requirement of allopathic physician practicing in public sector for India and Northeast India using the health information data from the Datanet India (Indiastat). The projection of physician was done using the average doctor to physician ratio for the year 2004–2017 and population projection was derived using the average exponential growth rate. Study found that with the current trend, India and Northeast are still far from meeting the healthcare needs of the population and the shortage of allopathic physician in public sectors will continue to persist in future. Under the current scenario, India will have require close to 1.6 million public sector allopathic doctors in 2030 to keep up with the WHO standard population to physician ratio. Northeast India will need 0.05 million to achieve the same standard. It could be expected that public health workforce in India and Northeast will remain insufficient in the future and this may have serious implication to the poor and vulnerable section of the population and therefore calls for a need to have a strong build-up and development in Indian health-care system.