Health seeking behavior of people in western and ayurvedic medicines: a comparative study in Nintavur divisional secretariat

Abstract

A medical activity in terms of health seeking behavior is an effective social and personal condition which experienced by each individual. People can choose any types of medical system when they want to heal from their sickness or the illness, wounds and other social diseases. There are number of medical systems available as western and alternative medical systems such as indigenous medicine (Ayurvedic), Unani, Acupuncture, Homeopathy, allopathic and etc to cure them for better health. Ayurvedic is one of the famous alternative medicines which was very popular and practiced widely by many people in India and, now it is widely consumed by the people in Sri Lanka. Therefore, this study is significant as it investigate why people have poor consumption of Ayurvedic medicine compared to western medical system although the government is promoting indigenous practices. The main objective of this research is to illustrate the conceptual explanation on health seeking or healing behavior and its practice on both western and Ayurvedic medicines in the Nintavur Divisional Secretariat area. And also this paper aims to understand comparatively the different healing behavior of people in western and Ayurvedic medical systems in the area of research pertaining to their different types of socio-economical and cultural backgrounds. This is primarily a qualitative study. Data was collected from primary as well as secondary sources. The primary data are collected through questionnaire, key informant interview, direct observation and focus group discussion (FGD). The secondary data was collected from the record of the District hospital, Nintavur and from the record of Government Rural Ayurvedic hospital, Nintavur. Finally, it can be given the result as the number of people go to western medicine for certain reasons and a few percentages of people go to Ayurvedic medicine for some other reason based on their personal and common consideration.