JSWMC

Background: Health care seeking behavior is an essential element to control sexually transmitted infections (STIs). STIs are major public health problems with significance in many part of the world. The incidence of acute STIs is believed to be high in many countries including Bangladesh. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among the 240 outdoor STIs patients to assess their health care seeking behavior, attending in the skin and venereal disease department of three tertiary level hospitals. Results: The mean age of the respondents was 36±6.17 years and nearly half (47.50%) of them were within the age groups 18-35 years. Three-fourth of the respondents (75%) were suffering from STIs for 2-12 months. Half (50%) of the respondents were not receiving any kind of treatment from health care providers and among the receiver 37.7% received treatment from hospital. Two-third (67.9%) of the respondents were receiving treatment for ≤1 month. Majority (67.5%) of the respondents had co-morbidities along with STIs and 59.3% stated about urinary tract infection. More than one-third (37.5%) of the respondent’s were not sure about their spouse had STIs or not and 17.5% were non responsive. Among the respondents who were aware about their spouses with STIs, 100% were taken treatment. 75% of them were treated by medical doctor and 25% were treated by herbal medications. More cited barriers by respondents were long treatment processing time (85%), lack of proper knowledge about information (77.5%) and long waiting time (40%). The association between age, sex and marital status with receiving health care treatment from health care providers were found statistically significant (p=0.000, p=0.040 and p=0.000) respectively. Conclusion: It is important to improve the accessibility and STIs related quality of health services as well as health seeking behaviors need to be promoted through health education and health promotion.