• African health sciences · Dec 2014

    Health seeking behaviour and challenges in utilising health facilities in Wakiso district, Uganda.

    • David Musoke, Petra Boynton, Ceri Butler, and Miph Boses Musoke.
    • Department of Disease Control and Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Makerere University College of Health Sciences, Kampala, Uganda.
    • Afr Health Sci. 2014 Dec 1; 14 (4): 1046-55.

    BackgroundThe health seeking behaviour of a community determines how they use health services. Utilisation of health facilities can be influenced by the cost of services, distance to health facilities, cultural beliefs, level of education and health facility inadequacies such as stock-out of drugs.ObjectivesTo assess the health seeking practices and challenges in utilising health facilities in a rural community in Wakiso district, Uganda.MethodsThe study was a cross sectional survey that used a structured questionnaire to collect quantitative data among 234 participants. The sample size was obtained using the formula by Leslie Kish.ResultsWhile 89% of the participants were aware that mobile clinics existed in their community, only 28% had received such services in the past month. The majority of participants (84%) did not know whether community health workers existed in their community. The participants' health seeking behaviour the last time they were sick was associated with age (p = 0.028) and occupation (p = 0.009). The most significant challenges in utilising health services were regular stock-out of drugs, high cost of services and long distance to health facilities.ConclusionsThere is potential to increase access to health care in rural areas by increasing the frequency of mobile clinic services and strengthening the community health worker strategy.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.