Determinants of health care seeking behavior among rural population of a coastal area in South India

Abstract

<p class="abstract"><strong>Background:</strong> Understanding of health seeking behaviour (HSB) is essential to provide need based health care services to the population. Many factors like sex, age, type of illness, access to services and perceived quality of the services, influences the health seeking behavior. This study assessed the HSB among rural population of a coastal area in Tamil Nadu.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Methods:</strong> A community based descriptive study was done in a rural coastal area of Villupuram district in Tamil Nadu state of India. Using simple random sampling method, 559 participants were selected. A pre-tested structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. Information about socio-demographic characteristics, presence of acute or chronic illness, health care seeking behavior and reasons for non-utilization of particular health facilities etc. was obtained. Chi square test was applied to find the association of health care seeking behavior with various participant characteristics. </p><p class="abstract"><strong>Results:</strong> Among 559 study participants, majority (56.4%) visited public health care facilities for various illnesses. Almost one-third of the study participants visited the private health facilities and another 11.6 percent visited other health facilities including pharmacies. Among various causes, febrile illnesses (39.5%) and pain (20.8%) were the most common reasons for visiting a health care facility. Individual’s income was significantly associated with the HSB (p value <0.05). Availability of services, free of cost was reported as most common reason for preferring to the public health facility. On other hand, private practitioners were preferred due to their better availability and quality of care.</p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> Public health care facilities were preferred by due to low cost of services and HSB varies with the type of illness and income of the individuals.

Health seeking behaviour and its determinants among rural population- a cross sectional study in South India

“…Similar results have also been reported by Chauhan et al, in their study in a coastal area of Villupuram district in Tamil Nadu and Kumar et al in their study in Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh). 10,11 Present study reveals preference for public health care facilities 48.15% over private health care sector 31.29%, among the participants. The study also brings out Allopath as the most preferred system (55.54%), followed by Ayurveda (33.37%).…”

“…However, Kumar et al, in their study reported musculoskeletal problems as the most common (56.5%) cause for seeking health care, followed by hypertension (34.1%), cataract or other eye related problems (23.1%) and diabetes (6.7%) etc., while Patil et al, in their study reported ARI as the most common disease (38.0 %), for seeking health care, followed by tuberculosis (30.75%), vector borne diseases like malaria and dengue, hypertension and diabetes. [10][11]13 Present study brings out that more than half (56.46%) of the study participants were aware of various available government and private health insurance schemes. However, only 19.74% of the respondents had insurance coverage, while most of them (95.8%) had subscribed to government health insurance schemes.…”

Factors associated with health care seeking behavior for musculoskeletal pain in Indonesia: A cross‐sectional study

“…The steroid doses used were large enough to cause adverse drug reactions, even in the short period. Another study in Malaysia also explained the tendency of adding steroids to over‐the‐counter traditional medicines or through traditional health services, causing fears of the emergence of steroid adverse drug reactions …”

Prevalence of self-reported gynaecological problems in a community of district Srinagar Kashmir valley

“…Various studies also showed a good percentage visiting alternative health care. 10 The decision for visiting local chemists may be due to the reason that it is accessible and care given free of cost.…”