DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH CARE SEEKING BEHAVIOUR FOR MALARIA TREATMENT IN UGANDA

Abstract

Despite being preventable and curable, malaria continues to be one of the global leading killer diseases especially amongst young children. Curative as well as preventive measures have been devised and revised but the war against malaria seems far from over. To re-awaken the curative fight and therefore reduce fatality of the disease, a socio economic perspective of treatment seeking behaviour needed to be studied to help inform a possible approach in educating the masses as well as ensuring timely consumption of an appropriate dosage. This study uses a national household survey dataset to investigate the determinants of health care seeking behaviour for malaria treatment in Uganda. A multinomial logit model is applied to analyze which/how socioeconomic factors influence malaria treatment seeking behaviour. It is found out that most people in Uganda go to private providers for first treatment of a malaria episode, some to government providers whereas less than 4% get treatment at home/no care at all. Household welfare and size are found to increase the probability of seeking treatment from a private provider. Male individuals, also, have higher probability of seeking treatment from private providers than females whereas education is found to only affect treatment to an extent that educated individuals have a lower probability, than the uneducated, of seeking treatment from a traditional health provider. Distance is, also, found to reduce probability of seeking health care from private provider. On the level of regions, northern Ugandans have limited usage of private facilities compared to other regions. Therefore, interventions to increase utilization of malaria treatment should give special attention to the poor and increase private provider-government partnership and support. In particular, private providers- in rural areas and areas that do not have a nearby government health facility-should be adequately facilitated by the government so as to provide low cost malaria treatment.