Determinants Of Demand For Health Care Services In Rural Households Of Liberia: Case Study Of Montserrado County

Abstract

This study seeks to find the factors that influence households’ demand for health care services when any household member falls ill. The study employs use of primary data that was collected from some selected six rural communities in Montserrado County of Liberia. A total of 267 households were sampled through systematic sampling technique. The data collected include household socioeconomic data such as age, sex, education, marital status, occupation, and occupation of the household head. Others are household income, medical expenses, household size, distance of residence to nearest health facility, and number of days lost due to illness. Binary logit model was used for analyzing the data. There are three categories of health care behaviours displayed by households, these are: self-treatment (58.6%), health care services in hospitals or clinics (21.7%), and traditional health care services (18.7%). The factors that have influence of seeking self-treatment include sex, marital status and occupation status of the household head, as well as proximity to the nearest health care center, waiting time at health care centers, number of days lost to illness, and medical expenses. On the other hand, household choices of hospitals or clinics as health care service providers are influenced by marital status of household head, household size and amount of medical expenses. Also, household choices of traditional medical services as health care service providers are influenced by household income, proximity to the nearest health care center, and number of days lost to illness. It was concluded that households should patronize appropriate health care service providers as against administering treatment by themselves. Also, government should devise mechanisms that would encourage subsidies on medical cost, improve the input system towards enhanced service delivery at the approved health care service providers.