Treatment Seeking Behavior of Pregnant Women about Malaria in Muzaffargard
Shumaila Nargus
University Institute of Public Health, University of Lahore, Pakistan.
Jaleel Kamran
Watim Dental College, Rawat, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Khalid Mahmud Khan
Allama Iqbal Medical College, Lahore, Pakistan.
Saleem Rana *
University Institute of Public Health, University of Lahore, Pakistan.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Malaria during pregnancy and childhood is the major public health problem and about half of the population is at risk of developing malaria in the world. During pregnancy, it causes severe anemia, low birth weight babies, abortion and many other severe complications. Knowledge plays main role to prevent this disease and therefore in this study health seeking behavior of pregnant women is explored to determine frequency of malaria suspected cases and the reasons for non-utilization of Government health facilities by pregnant women. A total 312 pregnant women were selected through multistage random sampling. A structured questionnaire was used to know about the knowledge and practice of pregnant women about malaria. A survey was conducted Longmalan Village of Muzaffargard. Data was collected and analyzed by using SPSS version 20. Knowledge about malaria was found poor in the majority of the respondents. The major sources of treatment was private health facilities. The major reasons of non-utilization of public health facilities were poor accessibility to transport, lack of trust on public medical providers, and their bad attitude. On the basis of these findings, it was concluded that malaria knowledge has shown to be an important factor for prevention and treatment seeking practices about malaria health education and literacy promotion should strengthen the knowledge about malaria prevention and treatment seeking behavior.
Keywords: Malaria, public health, pregnant women