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Differences in health care seeking behaviour between rural and urban communities in South Africa

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to explore possible differences in health care seeking behaviour among a rural and urban African population. DESIGN: A cross sectional design was followed using the infrastructure of the PURE-SA study. Four rural and urban Setswana communities which represented d...

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Autores principales: van der Hoeven, Marinka, Kruger, Annamarie, Greeff, Minrie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3419677/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22691443
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-11-31
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author van der Hoeven, Marinka
Kruger, Annamarie
Greeff, Minrie
author_facet van der Hoeven, Marinka
Kruger, Annamarie
Greeff, Minrie
author_sort van der Hoeven, Marinka
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to explore possible differences in health care seeking behaviour among a rural and urban African population. DESIGN: A cross sectional design was followed using the infrastructure of the PURE-SA study. Four rural and urban Setswana communities which represented different strata of urbanisation in the North West Province, South Africa, were selected. Structured interviews were held with 206 participants. Data on general demographic and socio-economic characteristics, health status, beliefs about health and (access to) health care was collected. RESULTS: The results clearly illustrated differences in socio-economic characteristics, health status, beliefs about health, and health care utilisation. In general, inhabitants of urban communities rated their health significantly better than rural participants. Although most urban and rural participants consider their access to health care as sufficient, they still experienced difficulties in receiving the requested care. The difference in employment rate between urban and rural communities in this study indicated that participants of urban communities were more likely to be employed. Consequently, participants from rural communities had a significantly lower available weekly budget, not only for health care itself, but also for transport to the health care facility. Urban participants were more than 5 times more likely to prefer a medical doctor in private practice (OR:5.29, 95% CI 2.83-988). CONCLUSION: Recommendations are formulated for infrastructure investments in rural communities, quality of health care and its perception, improvement of household socio-economical status and further research on the consequences of delay in health care seeking behaviour.
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spelling pubmed-34196772012-08-16 Differences in health care seeking behaviour between rural and urban communities in South Africa van der Hoeven, Marinka Kruger, Annamarie Greeff, Minrie Int J Equity Health Research OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to explore possible differences in health care seeking behaviour among a rural and urban African population. DESIGN: A cross sectional design was followed using the infrastructure of the PURE-SA study. Four rural and urban Setswana communities which represented different strata of urbanisation in the North West Province, South Africa, were selected. Structured interviews were held with 206 participants. Data on general demographic and socio-economic characteristics, health status, beliefs about health and (access to) health care was collected. RESULTS: The results clearly illustrated differences in socio-economic characteristics, health status, beliefs about health, and health care utilisation. In general, inhabitants of urban communities rated their health significantly better than rural participants. Although most urban and rural participants consider their access to health care as sufficient, they still experienced difficulties in receiving the requested care. The difference in employment rate between urban and rural communities in this study indicated that participants of urban communities were more likely to be employed. Consequently, participants from rural communities had a significantly lower available weekly budget, not only for health care itself, but also for transport to the health care facility. Urban participants were more than 5 times more likely to prefer a medical doctor in private practice (OR:5.29, 95% CI 2.83-988). CONCLUSION: Recommendations are formulated for infrastructure investments in rural communities, quality of health care and its perception, improvement of household socio-economical status and further research on the consequences of delay in health care seeking behaviour. BioMed Central 2012-06-12 /pmc/articles/PMC3419677/ /pubmed/22691443 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-11-31 Text en Copyright ©2012 van der Hoeven et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
van der Hoeven, Marinka
Kruger, Annamarie
Greeff, Minrie
Differences in health care seeking behaviour between rural and urban communities in South Africa
title Differences in health care seeking behaviour between rural and urban communities in South Africa
title_full Differences in health care seeking behaviour between rural and urban communities in South Africa
title_fullStr Differences in health care seeking behaviour between rural and urban communities in South Africa
title_full_unstemmed Differences in health care seeking behaviour between rural and urban communities in South Africa
title_short Differences in health care seeking behaviour between rural and urban communities in South Africa
title_sort differences in health care seeking behaviour between rural and urban communities in south africa
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3419677/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22691443
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-11-31
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