Research
Assessment of Health Care Seeking Behavior among House Hold Heads in Dale Woreda, Sidama Zone, Southern Ethiopia, Ethiopia
Abstract- Introduction: Health seeking behavior refers to activities undertaken by persons related to diseases experience. The initiation and treatment need for sick women, children, adolescents, and the old household members are usually determined by household heads. While household heads who are sick will independently decide to seek health care. There is limited information on the level of health care seeking behavior and associated factors among household heads. Therefore, assessing factors associated with health care seeking behavior among household heads have significant role in filling the information gap to control inappropriate health care seeking practice and its outcomes. Objective: To assess health care seeking behavior & its associated factor among household heads of Dale woreda from February to March 2017. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in Dale woreda by using quantitative data collection methods. Stratified random sampling technique was employed to select household heads from rural and urban areas. Data were collected using a structured and pretested questionnaire and entered into a computer using Epi data 4.13 and analyzed using SPSS for windows version 20. Result: A total of 804 household heads (625 rural and 179 urban) giving a response rate of 95.3%. Among the study participants male comprises 693(86.2%) and female comprises 111(13.8%).Majority of the sick individual lies in age group of 18-30 years which accounts for 372( 46.3%). The overall appropriate health care seeking behavior of household heads was 585 (72.8%) at the study area. Residence [AOR=3.32, 95% CI: 1.94, 5.68], Educational level [AOR=4.26, 95%CI: 2.16, 8.43], Monthly income [AOR=2.98, 95%CI: 1.37, 5.68] and Family size [AOR=2.29, 95%CI: 1.64, 3.19] were the independent predictor of health seeking behavior. Conclusion: The magnitude of appropriate health-seeking behavior was satisfactory. Residence, educational level, monthly income, and family size
