خلاصة:
Majority of the Nigerian population lives in rural area, where agriculture is the mainstay. Nigerian rural areas are the most neglected and its people, the most deprived with regard to the provision of modern health care services. Besides, they lack other basic infrastructural necessary for the maintenance and promotion of good health. The implication is that rural dwellers are subjected to high incidence of morbidity and mortality resulting from the incidence of preventable and infectious disease. Knowledge about health care seeking behavior is very crucial in health care policies formulation, early diagnosis, effective treatment and implementation of appropriate interventions in the rural areas where productive tasks are labor-intensive. In order to build a responsive health system in the rural areas, there is need to understand the health seeking behaviors on the demand side and that is the only way to expect improved health outcomes. This paper explores the factors influencing health-seeking behavior of rural areas in Nigeria and its implication on rural livelihood.
ملخص الجهاز:
An individual’s approach to health seeking behavior, can be referred to as a "pattern of resort", and as documented in the Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology (2004), people usually opt for the simplest form of treatment, which they deem more often than not, as the cheapest and most effective.
An adequate understanding of the different determinants of health seeking behavior of various communities and population groups is vital if any headway is to be made in the fight against illnesses and diseases within the rural areas.
In fact, health seeking behavior has been adjudged as one of the direct pathways through which socioeconomic status can exert an influence on health outcomes (Stowasser, Heiss, McFadden & Winter, 2011).
According to the study carried out by Ahmed, Tomson, Petzold, and Kabir (2005), socioeconomic indices were the single most inclusive determinant of health seeking behavior among the study population with an overriding influence over age and gender.
In addition, the quality of service obtained previously (patient/client satisfaction), availability, affordability of recommended medications, confidentiality principally in diseases which attract stigma from the society, attitude of health care providers, waiting time before consultation, availability and expertise of staff, and adequate equipment of facilities among others influences the health seeking behavior in rural areas (Musoke, Boynton, Butler, and Musoke, 2014).
With the existence of different factors which interplay to determine the health seeking behavior of people, efforts should be made to provide a synergism between them so that the outlook of the rural dwellers will be healthy.