ABSTRACT

Health seeking behaviours are important determinants of health and health outcomes especially in  Nigeria, where different avenues exist for seeking and receiving health care. This study was carried out to evaluate the health seeking behaviour towards hypertension among adult traders in Ahia-Ohuru market Aba, Abia state. The sample size for this study were 342 adult traders in Ahia-Ohuru market, Aba, Abia State, which were selected with the aid of balloting. A structured questionnaire was used to get the data which was used for this study, while the data was analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency and percentage. The association between the variables was done using chi-square analysis. The result on personal data of the adult traders revealed that majority (72.3%) of the adult traders resided in urban areas of the city, 55.7% were females, and 93.9% were Christians. The result on health seeking behaviour showed that more of the adults (28.9%) visited private health facilities when they were ill as against 2.0% who visited traditional or herbal health centers when they were ill, and 2.9% who visited faith healers. The result on blood pressure showed that 39.4% of the adults had normal blood pressure, 30.8% were pre-hypertensive, 18.9% have stage 1 hypertension while few (10.9%) had stage 2 hypertension. The result when further disaggregated by sex revealed that more males; 21.2% and 11.1%, were suffering from stage 1 and stage 2 hypertension as against the female 17.0% and 10.8%, respectively. The result on the association between health seeking behaviour of the adult and their blood pressure revealed that there was a positive association between health seeking behaviour using private health facility, self-medication with herbal drugs, and self-medication with pharmaceutical drugs and faith healers, with blood pressure of the adults. Also, the result on the association between personal data and blood pressure of the adults revealed that there was a positive association between age, educational level, occupation, income level and salt consumption with blood pressure of the adults. The study therefore concludes that, educational level, income level and occupation are probable factors which may inadvertently contribute to hypertension.