Urban women’s use of rural-based health care services: The case of Igbo women in Aba city, Nigeria

Abstract

This study addresses the quest for rural-based health care services among women in urban Nigeria relying on a large qualitative database obtained from 63 Igbo women living in Aba, Nigeria. Results indicate that urban Igbo women of different socioeconomic and demographic characteristics utilize the services of different rural-based health care providers—indigenous healers, traditional birth attendants (TBAs), faith/spiritual, western-trained doctors and nurses as well as chemist shopkeepers—for conditions ranging from infertility, through child birthing and abortions, to swollen body, epilepsy, bone setting, and stubborn skin diseases. Major attractions to rural-based therapists were the failure of urban-based health services to provide cure, perceived mystical nature of conditions, need to conceal information on therapeutic progress and/or the nature of specific disease conditions, belief in rural-based therapists’ ability to cure condition, and affordability of the services of rural-based health care providers. Findings underscore the critical implications of service characteristics, cultural beliefs, and the symbolic content of place(s) for care seekers’ patterns of resort. We suggest that need exists for policies and programs aimed at making health care services in urban Nigeria more responsive to care seekers’ socioeconomic and cultural sensitivities, integrating informal health care providers into Nigeria’s health care system, and strengthening public health education in Nigeria.