Health seeking behaviour for child illness in rural Guatemala

Considerable efforts were made in Guatemala to cover rural areas with health centres, and health programmes have been launched to treat and prevent the most important childhood diseases. Despite this, the utilization rate of public health services has reportedly been low throughout the past two decades. How, and how effectively, do mothers resolve the health problems of their children? To gain better insight into health care behaviour, we conducted a health services utilization survey in two highland communities in the department of Sacatepequez in 1992-1993. We asked 324 mothers in two villages whether, and where, they had sought help the last time their children under 5 years of age had suffered from diarrhoea, fever, cough symptoms or worms. Mothers relied on home care in 63-83% of reported episodes and the use of health services-Western or traditional-was consistently low. Although Western health care was easily accessible, it was used in only 8-15% of cases. The only identifiable significant independent determinants of utilization were occupational status of the mother (RR = 1.5 if employed) and overall level of socioeconomic development of the community (RR = 1.7). Inquiry into treatments used revealed that except for worms, which were frequently treated with herbs (31%) or external remedies (20%) alone, modern pharmaceuticals predominated. Antibiotics were the remedy of choice against diarrhoea (63%), antipyretics in case of fever (83%) and cough syrups with expectorants or antitussives against cough (65%). One hundred and twenty-one of the children born after 1975 died; in only 64 cases (53%) was a Western health service consulted between onset of disease and death. No relation was found between attendance and socioeconomic characteristics of the parents, but a positive linear association between duration of the fatal illness episode and age of the child could be identified. Independent sources report a drop in infant mortality of 53 and 35% respectively in the two communities between 1977 and 1991. Our findings seem to indicate that this reduction was achieved despite under-utilization of Western health services.