 Ngaka ya setswana, ngaka ya sekgoa or both? Health seeking behaviour in Batswana with pulmonary tuberculosisT. W. Steen and G. N. Mazonde Social Science & Medicine, 1999, vol. 48, issue 2, 163-172 Abstract: The health seeking behaviour of tuberculosis (TB) patients, and their beliefs and attitudes with regard to the disease, was studied in 212 Batswana with smear-positive pulmonary TB during 1993/94. There is an apparent resemblance between traditional ideas of disease being caused by pollution (breaking of taboos) and modern theories of spread via germs. TB may be regarded as a 'European disease' or as a 'Tswana disease' and this has implications for health behaviour. Patients who regard TB as a 'Tswana disease' may use modern medicine for symptom relief but traditional medicine to treat what they consider the cause of the disease. All patients were eventually diagnosed and initiated specific antituberculous treatment in a modern health facility. The median number of health facility visits was two, and the median delay period was 12 weeks. 95% of patients visited a modern health facility as their first step of action. Before start of specific treatment one or more alternative treatments was tried by 52% of patients during the delay period. After starting modern treatment, 47% of patients visited, or planned to visit, a traditional healer or a faith healer. Traditional explanations of disease seemed less prevalent in 1993/94 than in a study conducted among TB patients in Botswana ten years earlier, but few patients had a thorough understanding of TB from a biomedical point of view. More knowledge about patients' health seeking behaviour and perceptions would be useful for health workers. The findings of this study could offer suggestions for improvement in the area of health education. Keywords: Botswana; Health; seeking; behaviour; Traditional; treatment; Tuberculosis (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:48:y:1999:i:2:p:163-172 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.