Health Seeking Behaviour Adopted by Diagnosed Pulmonary Tuberculosis Patients Attending Directly Observed Treatment Short Course Clinics of Dharan Municipality, Nepal

Tuberculosis is one of the oldest and infectious disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis and is a major cause of death worldwide. It is also a major public health problem in Nepal. About 45 % of the total population is infected with TB, of which 60 % are adult. The objectives of this study were to determine the health seeking behavior adopted by diagnosed PTB patients attending directly observed treatment short course clinics of Dharan Municipality and to find out the association between the health seeking behaviour adopted by diagnosed PTB patients and the selected socio-demographic variables. A descriptive cross-sectional study design was adopted for the study, conducted in DOTS clinics of Dharan Municipality. A total of 104respondents enrolled, who were on ATT after getting registration from BPKIHS, the main center and interviewed with a self-prepared semi-structured questionnaire for which total enumeration sampling method was used. The mean age of respondents was 40.15 (SD ±17.059). Majority (55.8 %) of respondents were male and 23.1 % of them were illiterate. The median of time duration in reaching to health facilities was 30 (15, 30) days. Cough and fever were experienced in most of the respondent before seeking health care, 96.2 % and 93 %respectively. Most of the respondents (28 %) were gone in private clinic for the first time for seeking health care followed by pharmacy shop (19 %). According to them, the reason for visiting to those health facilities were: due to confidence in getting cure, service available anytime and least of them reported they were referred by health personnel. Less than half of the respondents perceived delay in seeking care, the main cause of delay was hoping of symptoms would go-away on its own and other most important cause was delayed diagnosis done by doctors.