Health Seeking Behaviour of Community People in Lalitpur District of Nepal

Abstract

Background: Health seeking behavior is any action taken by an individual who perceive themselves to have any health problems or to be ill, for an appropriate remedy. It can be determined by physical, socioeconomic, cultural or political, environmental, socio-demographic, knowledge, gender issues, political environment and health care system. Individual have different opinion regarding willingness to seek health from health care services. The general objective is to assess the health seeking behavior of community people in Lalitpur district of Nepal. Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on community people of Mahalaxmi municipality in Lalitpur district of Nepal with the sample size 221. Probability proportionate method was used to select the ward and household, and respondents were selected purposively. Self-developed structure questionnaire was used to collect data using interview technique. Data management, analysis and interpretation were done using both descriptive and inferential statistics in SPSS version 16 software. Results: Among 221 respondents, 84.6% of respondents seek health care services whereas 15.4 % did not seek health last time they were ill. The most frequently reported places to seek health care services were modern health facility (modern medication) (82.4%) followed by Self-medication (11.4%), alternative medication (4.6%) and traditional healer (1.6%) respectively. There was statistically significance association between health seeking behavior of community people with marital status (p=0.002), occupation (p=0.001), level of education (p=0.030), source of income (p<0.001), monthly income (p<0.006), duration of illness (p=0.008) and availability of nearest health care services (P<0.001). Conclusion: Study concluded that most of the respondents used modern medication while last time they were ill, such as hospital, clinic and health post as a first choice to treat health problem. The reasons for not seeking health care services were due to far distance, lack of money, lack of family support, lack of knowledge. Thus, awareness programmes are essential in community people for appropriate used of available health care services. Key words: Community people, Health seeking behavior, Utilization of health care services.