UTILIZATION OF ETHNOMEDICAL HEALTHCARE PRACTICES IN NEPAL: A MESSAGE FOR HEALTH POLICY MAKERS

Ethnomedical healthcare practices are indigenous healing and curing practices, other than conventional medicine practices that has been widely adopted approaches to seek health care in Nepal from ancient times. Though government has policy of free Primary Health Care service provided at basic administrative levels, the cost of receiving it is still putting the burden in financing the healthcare. The utilization rate of public health care found low in the study population. This could be at least partially affected by various factors such as poor coverage and poor quality of health services and inadequate resources to meet the current demand of growing population. The study revealed that the availability, affordability, accessibility and acceptability of majority of the ethnomedical healthcare service utilization was higher than the public healthcare. The barriers to improve the availability, accessibility and acceptability of primary healthcare need to be identified and the policy and strategic implementation is recommended.