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Coping with ill-health: health care facility, chemist or medicinal plants? Health-seeking behaviour in a Kenyan wetland

BACKGROUND: Sub-Saharan African wetlands, settlement areas to growing populations, expose their users to diseases as necessary health infrastructure remains underdeveloped. METHODS: Mixed methods were adopted to assess the health-seeking behaviour of different exposure groups (farmers, pastoralists,...

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Autores principales: Anthonj, Carmen, Giovannini, Peter, Kistemann, Thomas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6554869/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31170983
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12914-019-0199-1
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author Anthonj, Carmen
Giovannini, Peter
Kistemann, Thomas
author_facet Anthonj, Carmen
Giovannini, Peter
Kistemann, Thomas
author_sort Anthonj, Carmen
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Sub-Saharan African wetlands, settlement areas to growing populations, expose their users to diseases as necessary health infrastructure remains underdeveloped. METHODS: Mixed methods were adopted to assess the health-seeking behaviour of different exposure groups (farmers, pastoralists, service sector workers) in a Kenyan wetland community. Based on a cross-sectional survey (n = 400), syndromic surveillance was linked to health-seeking event analysis. In-depth interviews with community members (n = 20) and experts (n = 8) enabled the integration of healthcare user and provider perspectives. RESULTS: Health-seeking behaviour in the wetland was determined by physical/infrastructural, natural/environmental, financial/socioeconomic and social/demographic factors, as well as human/cultural aspects such as traditional preferences rooted in health beliefs. Community members had different strategies of coping with ill-health and few symptoms remained untreated. Whether via a health care facility admission, the visit of a chemist, or the intake of pharmaceuticals or medicinal plants: treatment was usually applied either via a healthcare service provider or by the community members themselves. An undersupply of easy-to-reach healthcare options was detected, and healthcare services were not available and accessible to all. The widely-practiced self-treatment of symptoms, e.g. by use of local medicinal plants, mirrors both potential healthcare gaps and cultural preferences of wetland communities. CONCLUSIONS: Integrated into an overall health-promoting wetland management approach, widely accepted (cultural) realities of health-seeking behaviours could complement health sector service provision and help ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all in wetlands.
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spelling pubmed-65548692019-06-10 Coping with ill-health: health care facility, chemist or medicinal plants? Health-seeking behaviour in a Kenyan wetland Anthonj, Carmen Giovannini, Peter Kistemann, Thomas BMC Int Health Hum Rights Research Article BACKGROUND: Sub-Saharan African wetlands, settlement areas to growing populations, expose their users to diseases as necessary health infrastructure remains underdeveloped. METHODS: Mixed methods were adopted to assess the health-seeking behaviour of different exposure groups (farmers, pastoralists, service sector workers) in a Kenyan wetland community. Based on a cross-sectional survey (n = 400), syndromic surveillance was linked to health-seeking event analysis. In-depth interviews with community members (n = 20) and experts (n = 8) enabled the integration of healthcare user and provider perspectives. RESULTS: Health-seeking behaviour in the wetland was determined by physical/infrastructural, natural/environmental, financial/socioeconomic and social/demographic factors, as well as human/cultural aspects such as traditional preferences rooted in health beliefs. Community members had different strategies of coping with ill-health and few symptoms remained untreated. Whether via a health care facility admission, the visit of a chemist, or the intake of pharmaceuticals or medicinal plants: treatment was usually applied either via a healthcare service provider or by the community members themselves. An undersupply of easy-to-reach healthcare options was detected, and healthcare services were not available and accessible to all. The widely-practiced self-treatment of symptoms, e.g. by use of local medicinal plants, mirrors both potential healthcare gaps and cultural preferences of wetland communities. CONCLUSIONS: Integrated into an overall health-promoting wetland management approach, widely accepted (cultural) realities of health-seeking behaviours could complement health sector service provision and help ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all in wetlands. BioMed Central 2019-06-06 /pmc/articles/PMC6554869/ /pubmed/31170983 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12914-019-0199-1 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Anthonj, Carmen
Giovannini, Peter
Kistemann, Thomas
Coping with ill-health: health care facility, chemist or medicinal plants? Health-seeking behaviour in a Kenyan wetland
title Coping with ill-health: health care facility, chemist or medicinal plants? Health-seeking behaviour in a Kenyan wetland
title_full Coping with ill-health: health care facility, chemist or medicinal plants? Health-seeking behaviour in a Kenyan wetland
title_fullStr Coping with ill-health: health care facility, chemist or medicinal plants? Health-seeking behaviour in a Kenyan wetland
title_full_unstemmed Coping with ill-health: health care facility, chemist or medicinal plants? Health-seeking behaviour in a Kenyan wetland
title_short Coping with ill-health: health care facility, chemist or medicinal plants? Health-seeking behaviour in a Kenyan wetland
title_sort coping with ill-health: health care facility, chemist or medicinal plants? health-seeking behaviour in a kenyan wetland
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6554869/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31170983
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12914-019-0199-1
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