Students’ Health Care Seeking Behaviour and Perception about Health Care Services at SD Dombo University in Resource Poor Setting in Northern Ghana

Background: Students have the tendency to delay or ignore preventive health-care measures until the illness escalates. The purpose of this study is to assess the health seeking behavior of these students and to identify the factors affecting this behavior. Methods: Data was collected from a sample of 422 students at the Dombo University on heath seeking behaviour in the past 12 months, using an anonymous questionnaire. We employed a two (2) level of data analysis. At the first level we adopted the univariate analysis which included an assessment of health seeking behaviour and a sample description of the independent variables. Frequencies and percentages were used to guide the sample description. The second level employed multivariate analysis to assess the adjusted association of the explanatory variables and the outcome variable. We used binary regression model because the outcome variable was dichotomous and categorized into two (2). Thus, health seeking at the formal level and health seeking at the informal level. Results: Among the 422 students who participated in the study 86.97% (367/422) reported ever experiencing illness symptoms in the past 12 months. Of the number who experienced illness symptoms, 56.40% (207/367) indicated malaria while 21.80% (80/367) mentioned headache. A total of 83.92% (308/367) visited the hospital, Clinic or pharmacy when they detected illness but 16.08% indicated they did nothing when ill or visited the spiritualists, herbalist or used internet. Majority of the students 50.0% (137/275) indicated that aside the University hospital, they also visited the Wa Municipal hospital when ill. One in three students say they did not visit the University hospital when ill because of long waiting time to receive medical care. From the multivariate analysis, we detected a positive association between students who ever experienced symptoms of illness and seeking formal health care assistance [OR: 1.02; CI: -4.39 - 0.37]. A negative association was however detected as students advanced in age [OR: 0.40 CI: 0.11 - 1.70], students who experienced malaria and other illness symptoms [OR: 0.32; CI: 0.22 - 1.49] and students who visited the University hospital after experiencing illness symptoms hospital [OR: 0.32; CI: 0.22 - 1.48] and seeking formal health care assistance. Conclusion: Promotional activities may be necessary to inform and educate students on ration use and access to treatment at the formal health care centers. Malaria and headache are more common among SD Dombo University students. Further studies are required to understand the causes of the malaria and headache among the students.