Does Availability of Free Treatment Influences Health Seeking Behaviour of People?

An individual is rational about making healthcare choices and despite of availability of TB drugs at door steps; people are not using it as their direct healthcare choice. In the present study an attempt has been made to study the factors leading to different healthcare choices in presence of social barriers which is often attached to stigmatized diseases like TB. A small scale survey data on 367 TB patients have been collected from high TB incidence area to capture the factors responsible for various healthcare choices made for treatment of tuberculosis. Bi-variate results shows that age, sex, marital status, level of education and economic status is significantly related to mean number of healthcare choices made. Despite of this, only eight percent of patient directly went to DOTS centre for check up. It is also observed that those with earlier experience of TB in the household make more healthcare choices. Discrimination faced due to TB is also significantly influencing the number of healthcare choices made for treatment. There is clear indication that somewhere tuberculosis program has failed to gain faith and believe on treatment provided for treatment of tuberculosis within community.