Health care choice: options and factors influencing health seeking behaviour in khiwisero division of Butere/Mumias district

Abstract

This study examines the influence of socio-economic and cultural factors in the choice of healthcare in a rural setting. The focus is on a rural community [area] since these areas .have suffered inadequate modem medical facilities - a process initiated in the colonial era, but which has continued unabated in the post-independence period. To be able to investigate these factors, it was considered prudent to initially explore the range of therapeutic options available to the rural residents ofKhwisero. The rationale of this study is to examine why people follow the medical care consumption patterns that can be observed [identified] within their socio-economic and cultural setting. This information can then be used to make national policies on the improvement of health care facilities more effective. This study used both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis. Ethnographic methods such as in-depth interviews direct observation and focus group discussion were used. Secondary data which was also used and comprised library materials i.e books, journals and articles, that identified gaps of knowledge and helped shape up this research. A wide range of therapeutic options was found to be prevalent in the study area. This can be broadly classified as falling either in the indigenous medical realm or in the modem medical system. Factors such as aetiological beliefs, economic resources available to a household, the severity of an illness and a patients' social matrix are investigated and found to excercise a deterministic role in the choice of healthcare. Aetiological beliefs for instance constrained the utilization of modem medical facilities for illnesses believed to be supernaturally caused. The' adoption of in-kind, credit and property payment procedures endeared rural cash-strapped households to private medical facilities and traditional healers. This study concludes that both traditional and modem. medical systems play a complimentary and vital role in the fight against illnesses in rural areas. It is hereby recommended that there is a need to impose checks in the provision of modem healthcare services provided by community health workers and drug stores to guard against their penetration by unscrupulous drug merchants. The role of traditional medicine in rural areas is already obviated. There is however a need to institute a deliberate and practical process to rediscover this lost heritage and to rid it of the obscurantist elements that have crept in following the many years of official and subtle neglect