Determinants of health seeking behaviours for malaria treatment in Cameroon

Abstract

Background: Household health-seeking behaviour for malaria treatment is an important policy concern in malaria-endemic African countries. This paper aims to shed light on the determinants of household’s health-seeking behaviour for malaria treatment in Cameroon.Methods: The cross-sectional study used secondary data from the fourth Cameroonian household consumption survey conducted by the National Institute of Statistics. A stratified, 2-stage sampling was implemented with a sample of 918 households which sought malaria treatment from different alternatives providers. The multinomial probit model was used to estimate the probability based on socio-demographic and economics determinants for a household to choose between different types of providers of malaria treatment.Results: The findings of this study indicate that, the alternative providers for malaria treatment were: public health facilities (61.1%), private health facilities (8.5%), traditional healers (1.4%), pharmacies (4.6%), informal vendor (18%), other types of recourse (6.4%). The decision to choose the provider for malaria treatment depends on factors such as household head, region, level of education, religion, area of residence, socio-professional category, and gender. The level of education appears to be an important determinant of a household’s seeking behaviour. Those with higher education are more likely to seek care at formal health facilities.Conclusions: Health policy-makers need to strive to improve the socio-demographic and economic conditions and sensitize households on the appropriate alternative ways to ensure the universal access to diagnosis and effective treatment of malaria in line with the global strategies recommended by WHO to achieve malaria elimination by 2030.

Are Urban residents seeking appropriate care for Malaria? Evidence from an exploratory qualitative study in two cities in Nigeria

“…Previous studies [23,25] have found association between higher education and timely seeking of treatment for suspected malaria infection in formal healthcare settings. Our study nding showed that many uneducated community members do not care about seeking care for suspected malaria infection from the hospital which is in tandem with what previous studies [23,34] have found out. It is more likely that the uneducated will have low health literacy and so they may not be aware of appropriate settings to treat their malaria related illness [35].…”

Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Among Adult Malaria Patients Co-Infected with Opportunistic Intestinal Coccidian Parasites in Fundong Health District, Northwest, Cameroon: A Cross Section Study Design

“…Our study also revealed that age, group, gender, marital status and occupation were key determinant of observed knowledge which influenced practices that were observed. This is contrary to (Nounouce et al, 2022) where the level of education was a key determinant factor of a household health seeking behaviour. A study in Turkey by Abudu et al (2022) reported that participants were instead worried about the cost of treatment as a key factor to have influence patients seeking healthcare.…”

“…We observed that 6% of the patient co-infected with intestinal coccidian diseases had simple malaria compared to 94% with severe malaria. Delay between onset of malaria and coccidian diseases and seeking healthcare is sufficient to increase the seriousness of the illness and death since malaria has the capacity to kill within hours of onset of symptoms (Nounouce et al, 2022).…”