Health-seeking behaviour and its determinants of health of Under-5 Children living in urban slums of Chennai, India 2018.

BACKGROUND

Appropriate health-seeking behaviour could help in reducing child mortality and morbidity. Information on social factors of mortality and health-seeking behaviours of caregivers of under-5 children from slums of Indian cities is minimal in literature.

OBJECTIVES

We estimated the prevalence of health-seeking behaviour for morbidity ofunder-5 children and its determinants in urban slums in Chennai city, India.

METHODS

A cross-sectional study was conducted using a mixed-method design among primary caregivers of under-5 children living in Chennai slums, India. Two-stage cluster sampling was adopted to select 40 slums. A total of 233 primary caregivers were interviewed. Nine focus group discussions and 18 in-depth interviews were conducted among the primary caregivers. Prevalence of inappropriate health-seeking behaviour was estimated, and determinants were identified by multivariate binary logistic regression analysis. Thematic analysis was done on qualitative data.

RESULTS

We interviewed 233 primary caregivers. The weighted prevalence of inappropriate health-seeking behaviour for under-five children in urban slums of Chennai was 53.9% (95% CI: 46.9 - 60.8). Primary caregivers educated above secondary school were more likely (AOR of 2.3, 95% CI: 1.3-4.1) to follow inappropriate health-seeking behaviour compared to those educated below. Similarly, caregivers who were unaware of young child feeding practices (AOR of 3.6, 95% CI: 1.9-6.5) and early care-seeking and health practices (AOR of 2.5, 95% CI: 1.3-4.9) were more likely to engage in inappropriate health-seeking behaviour compared to those who were aware and we found that illness symptoms influenced health-seeking behaviour and that early disease detection might prevent severe illness.

CONCLUSION

Health-seeking behaviour was found to be suboptimal among under-5 children in Chennai's urban slums. We suggest policymakers improve interventions on early care-seeking of common childhood illnesses in the urban health programme.