Choice of health providers and health-seeking behaviour among forest goer population in Myanmar: findings from a cross-sectional household survey

• Published in: Malaria Journal
• Main Authors: May Me Thet, Myat Noe Thiri Khaing, Su Su Zin, Si Thu Thein, Kemi Tesfazghi
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2022
• Subjects: Forest goers; Health seeking; Febrile illness; RDT; Provider choice; Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Infectious and parasitic diseases; RC109-216; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-022-04356-7; https://doaj.org/article/4b9404cbadcd433d8df24e6412d29318

Abstract Background In Myanmar, malaria still poses a significant burden for vulnerable populations particularly forest goers even though impressive progress has been made over the past decade. Limited evidence existed related to forest goers’ health-seeking behaviour and factors that drive decision making for providers’ choice to support national malaria programmes towards elimination. In response to that, this research is conducted to identify who they preferred and what are the factors associated with providers’ choice in malaria febrile illness and Rapid Diagnostic Testing (RDT). Methods A cross-sectional study applying quantitative household survey was completed with 479 forest goer households in 20 malaria endemic townships across Myanmar. The household data was collected with the types of providers that they consulted for recent and previous febrile episodes. To identify the factors associated with providers’ choices, univariate and multivariate multinomial logistic regressions were done using Stata version 14.1. Statistical significance was set as p = 0.05. Results A total of 307 individuals experienced fever within one month and 72.3% sought care from providers. Also, a total of 509 forest goers reported that they had a previous febrile episode and 62.6% received care from a provider. Furthermore, 56.2% said that they had RDT testing during these previous febrile illnesses. They consulted public facilities and public health staff, private facilities, private and semi-private providers, community health volunteers or workers in their residing village and those located outside their villages but majority preferred those within their villages. On multivariate analyses, second richest quintile (public, RRR = 12.9) (semi-private, RRR = 17.9), (outside, RRR = 8.4) and access to 4 and above nearby providers (public, RRR = 30.3) (semi-private, RRR = 1.5) (outside, RRR = 0.5) were found to be significantly associated with provider choice for recent fever episode. Similar findings were also found for previous ...