Health-Seeking Behaviour of Nigerian Rural Dwellers: Implications for Healthcare Professionals

The Nigerian rural people demonstrate undesirable health-seeking behavior because of their cosmological and nosological notions which ascribe etiology of diseases and ill-health to entities far beyond the realm of the stethoscope. A comprehensive healthcare system in Nigeria has to focus more on the 65% of rural people who are the poorest of the poor. The present review is therefore solicited to enhance the health status of rural dwellers by providing potentially useful guidance that will enhance the knowledge of healthcare professionals with respect to the peculiar health-seeking behavior of rural dwellers so as to promote good patient-physician interaction and to provide empirical basis for rational health policy formulation. A manual literature and internet (Google, Medline, Embase, HINARI and Cochrane data bases) search showed that in a pluralistic medical milieu in which the rural dwellers find themselves, the decision to seek healthcare, where to do this and the form of care perceived as appropriate are all influenced by a multiplicity of factors relating to the person, the facility and the socio-cultural environment. Primarily, religious beliefs, use of Traditional African Medicine (TAM) and patients’ perception of reality influence health-seeking behavior. In order to adequately and successfully manage the Nigerian rural patients, the healthcare provider must pay attention to patients’ impression of illness and underpinning health beliefs during consultation, in therapeutics and in handling evolving complications of TAM and ethical dilemmas. Improvement of rural infrastructure and behavioral health promotion campaigns among the rural people together with rational health policy formulation and regulation of TAM practice, are imperative.