Determinants of Healthcare Seeking Behaviour amongst Households In Nigeria

Abstract

The weak healthcare-seeking behaviour in Nigeria has been a major concern for both scholars and policy makers in recent years. This issue is also reinforced by international pressures on nations (Nigeria inclusive) to achieve the SDGs goal number 3 by 2030. Thus, this study assessed the key determinants of healthcare seeking behaviour among households in Nigeria. The study employeddatasets from NOIPolls-Afrobarometer national survey which sampled 3,200 participants residing in the urban and rural communities in Nigeria aged 18 years and above.A multivariate logistic regression,cross-tabulation and chi-squareanalytical tools were employed to analyze the data collected from the field. The research found thatundue financial extortions from patients seeking healthcare services by healthcare service providers, unfriendly attitudes of healthcare service providers to patients seeking medical attention, poor access to medical services, long waiting time, lack of medicines at the clinic, shortage of medical staff, poor condition of health facilities and households' lived poverty index had significant influence on healthcare seeking behaviour of households in Nigeria. This reveals that the healthcare-seeking behaviours of households in Nigeria are significantly related to the enabling, predisposing and need factors. It then suggests the strengthening of healthcare systems, and workforce development, including communication and counselling skills among healthcare service providers by the government, NGOs and stakeholders in the private sectorin order to curb the unfriendly attitudes of healthcare providersto patientsseeking healthcare services.The study also recommends that the government should set up monitoring and
compliance mechanism agencies across all states in Nigeria, and ensure universal and sustainable healthcare coverage across the urban and rural communities in Nigeria.