Health extension service utilization barriers in East Gojjam Zone, Northwest Ethiopia: qualitative study

INTRODUCTION: the health extension service is a package that aims to improve primary healthcare services, mainly in rural areas through an innovative community-based approach that focuses on prevention, healthy living, and basic curative care which is implemented by the health extension workers using the health post as a center of care. Thus, this study aimed to explore the barriers of health extension service utilization in East Gojjam Zone, North West, Ethiopia. METHODS: qualitative study was conducted from Feb 16 to May 30, 2021, on the barriers to health extension service utilization among households in East Gojjam Zone. The data was collected with focus group discussion and in-depth interviews to address our objective. Study participants were selected purposively until the required data was saturated. The data was analyzed under selected themes based on the guide and summarized manually. RESULTS: respondents reported that there were lots of reasons that preclude proper utilization of the health extension packages both in urban and rural households in East Gojjam Zone-like negligence, previous experience, misinterpretation of the health extension packages, the religion they believe, unavailability of water continuously, wrongly utilization of the packages rather than their purpose and the environment they live. CONCLUSION: there are still lots of barriers regarding health extension package utilization in the East Gojjam Zone. Working on households on purpose and utilization of health extension packages in a religiously and culturally acceptable manner is advisable. Further research on reported barriers is needed.