Abstract:
The aim of this study was to determine the pattern of health seeking behavior and factors associated with delay in health seeking behavior among tuberculosis patients in border hospitals, Chiang Rai province, Thailand. A cross-sectional study was conducted in four biggest border hospitals in Chiang Rai province, Thailand during May to July 2018 among 103 identified tuberculosis cases. Data was collected by a structured questionnaire on patients’ general characteristics, HIV status, distance from health service, health seeking treatment with onset symptoms, and patient delay. Collected data was analyzed in SPSS 22. Both descriptive and inferential statistics was employed in data analysis. Chi- square test was applied for the test of association between anemia and designated variables. Later, the variables with p-value <0.20 obtained in bivariate was processed for multivariate analysis and considered significant with p-value <0.05. Finally, adjusted odd ratio (AOR) with 95% of confidence interval (CI) was reported.
The study found that most of the participants were age more than 60 years old (27.2%), with 48.5% of the patients reported to have no educational background, and 61.2% were single. Thai nationality was found to be the highest nationality of the study’s participants with 61.2%. Interestingly, the prevalence of delay in health seeking behavior among the study’s participants was high at 65.1%. Government hospital and self-medication were mostly presented for health seeking behavior at 40.8% and 20.4%, respectively. From the result, the factors that significantly related to the delay in health seeking behavior among TB patients in Chiang Rai province were HIV status (AOR = 6.806, 95%CI: 1.174-39.462), Nationality (AOR = 2.824, 95%CI: 1.041-7.660) and duration to health facility (AOR = 18.467, 95% CI: 1.257-271.414). The study showed that delay in appropriate health seeking among TB patients in Chiang Rai province, Thailand were high. Therefore, further intervention emphasizes on the improvement of appropriate knowledge of TB and health seeking behavior to strengthen the TB control.
