Health Problems and Health Care Seeking Behaviour of Rohingya Refugees

• Published in: Journal of Medical Research and Innovation Vol. 1; no. 1; pp. 21 - 29
• Main Authors: Masud, Abdullah Al, Ahmed, Md. Shahoriar, Sultana, Mst. Rebeka, Alam, S.M. Iftekhar, Kabir, Russell, Arafat, S.M. Yasir, Papadopoulos, Konstantinos
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 03.03.2017
• ISSN: 2456-8139; 2456-8139
• DOI: 10.15419/jmri.27

Background: Rohingya refugees are one of the most vulnerable group due to lack of health care system, personal hygiene, shelter, sanitation and violence. Aim: The present study aims to find out the health problems and health care seeking behavior of rohingya refugees, to identify the socio-demographic information for such exposure group in relation to age, sex, occupation, living areas, to explore the patient’s physical, emotional, perceptions, attitudes and environmental health problems and to bring out health care seeking behavior of refugees. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted. A total of 149 samples were selected conveniently for this study from the refugee camps. Data was collected by using mixed type of questionnaire. Descriptive statistic was used for data analysis which has depicted through tables, pie chart and bar chart. Results: The finding of the study showed that 45.6% participants had multiple problems, followed by 16.8% participants who had other specific problems like musculoskeletal pain, visual problems and peptic ulcer. Urinary tract infection was the leading individual health problem with 11.4% of the sample group having it. 10.7% participants had hypertension, 6% had respiratory tract infection, 3.4% had nutrition deficiency, 4.75% had diabetes mellitus and 1.3% had sanitation & hygiene problems. Among the participants, 68.4% age ranged between 15-59 years. The study showed that, only 16.1% participants were satisfied with the quality of service they received while 37.6% participants said that they needed better services such as more laboratory test, radiological imaging, more medicine and more doctors. Conclusion: It is clear that refugees suffered from a variety of health problems, because their living condition and environmental situation were not similar like an independent nation. Further, basic amenities like medicines and other services were not available.