Health seeking behaviour among the farm house residents in Vijayapura district, Karnataka. A Cross sectional study

Abstract

Background: Health seeking behaviour as defined by Kasl and Cobb is any activity undertaken by individuals who perceive themselves to have a health problem or to be ill for the purpose of finding an appropriate remedy. More often than not, a country has a mixture of both public and private health care systems to ensure an equitable distribution of quality health care. Objectives: To identify the health seeking behavior and distance travelled to access the health care among the farm house residents. Material & Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among the farm house residents in rural areas of Vijayapura district. A Sample of 450 farm house residents were interviewed by prestructured proferma containing information regarding socio demographic profile, health seeking behaviour and distance travelled to access the health care among the farm house residents. PSUs were selected with probability proportional to size sampling and 5 households in a selected PSU were selected by random sampling. All characteristics were summarized descriptively, Chi-square (?2) test was employed to determine the significance of differences. Results: Majority of the participants took treatment from government hospital followed by private practitioner when they are sick and majority of participants travelled between 1-5KM. (61.3%) and for the past illness it was (33.2%). Conclusion: The present study concludes that availability of government health facility constitute about (93.8%) compared to private (6.2%).