A STUDY OF MORBIDITY PATTERN AND HEALTH SEEKING BEHAVIOUR IN URBAN SLUM POPULATION OF VARANASI, INDIA.

Background & Objectives: Health is an essential part for good quality of life. India provides unbounded range of wide geographic variations, besides cultural differences, so level of health and disease vary between people and place overtime. Healthcare seeking behavior is any activity undertaken by individuals who perceive they to have a health problem or to be ill for the purpose of finding an appropriate remedy keeping this view the aim of this study is to estimate the burden of regular disease and the associated spectrum of morbidities in different urban slums of Varanasi district, Uttar Pradesh. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted to find out the morbidity pattern and health seeking behavior of urban slums in some selected urban slums areas of Varanasi City. We had selected randomly 7 slums out of 218 urban slums for this study. Total 600 household surveyed from the urban slums area from the Varanasi. Complete information has been collected on complete enumeration basis through pre designed and pre-tested questionnaires. Result: out of 600 household majority of the respondents, 494(25.7%) were male and 604(33.4%) were female belonging to 15-29 age group. The dominance of religion in the study subjects was in the following sequence of 569 (94.8%) Hindu and 31(5.16%) Muslims. Majority of households respondents 516(86%) found to be married followed by 84(14%) widow respondents. Regarding educational status, 265 (44.16%) were illiterate and 335(56.7%) were literate. Most 222(37%) of the respondents were employed like daily wages, own business 149(24.83%), private jobs 65(13.83%) and not working respondents was 87(14.5%).Majority 559(93.17%) of the slum dwellers consulted government hospitals 225(40.25) a private hospitals 334(59.75%) during illness. Among 200(33.3%) respondents preferred to visit private hospitals 141(70.50%) for the consulted viral and cough cold rest of the going government medical college during to illness. Highly significant difference was found between the education and occupation of the urban slums respondents with gender of the household. (p=0.001and p=0.01) and significant association was found occupation of the urban slums respondents with health seeking behaviour during illness (p=0.0418). According to findings utilization of health care facilities urb an slums13.6% of cases are of pregnancy goes to government medical college and 16.8% were availed the treatment from the private hospital . Cases of Viral & cold cough were taken the treatment of government facilities 30.9 % . No case found of pneumonia goes to private hospitals in Binayaka, Chitaipur, Navabganj, Ranipur & Tulsipur.