IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0240096.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A qualitative study of the barriers to utilizing healthcare services among the tribal population in Assam

Author

Listed:
  • Bandita Boro
  • Nandita Saikia

Abstract

Objective: We aim to explore the barriers to accessing modern healthcare services in two tribal populations in Assam. Methods: In March 2018, we conducted qualitative research through 60 in-depth interviews with men and women aged 15 to 50 from Bodo and Rabha tribes in Udalguri and Baksa districts of Assam. We interviewed a group of health-service providers from public health facilities to understand the demand-supply balance in those facilities. Findings: On the demand side, direct and indirect financial obstacles, distance to health facilities, poor public transportation, perceived negative behavior of hospital staff, and lack of infrastructure were the main barriers to utilizing healthcare facilities. On the supply side, doctors and nurses in government health facilities were overburdened by demand due to a lack of human resources. Conclusions: Our study highlights the barriers to utilizing health facilities; these are not always driven by factors linked to the patient’s socio-economic status but also depend significantly on the quality of the health services and other contextual factors. Although the government has made efforts to improve the rural healthcare system through national-level programs, our qualitative study shows that these programs have not been successful in enhancing the rural healthcare system in the study area.

Suggested Citation

  • Bandita Boro & Nandita Saikia, 2020. "A qualitative study of the barriers to utilizing healthcare services among the tribal population in Assam," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-14, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0240096
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240096
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240096
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240096&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0240096?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. S V Subramanian & George Davey Smith & Malavika Subramanyam, 2006. "Indigenous Health and Socioeconomic Status in India," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 3(10), pages 1-11, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Subramanian, S.V. & Subramanyam, Malavika A. & Selvaraj, Sakthivel & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2009. "Are self-reports of health and morbidities in developing countries misleading? Evidence from India," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 260-265, January.
    2. Jayanta Kumar Bora & Rajesh Raushan & Wolfgang Lutz, 2019. "The persistent influence of caste on under-five mortality: Factors that explain the caste-based gap in high focus Indian states," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(8), pages 1-20, August.
    3. Swati Dutta, 2022. "Risk factors for child survival among tribal dominated states in India: a pooled cross sectional analysis," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 391-416, September.
    4. Satrughan Behera & Atish Kumar Dash & Rathi Kanta Kumbhar, 2023. "Disparities in the Health and Well-being of Scheduled Tribes and Non-Scheduled Tribes Populations in India," Shanlax International Journal of Economics, Shanlax Journals, vol. 12(1), pages 69-77, December.
    5. Laurie Brown & Binod Nepal, 2011. "Modelling Potential Impact of Improved Survival of Indigenous Australians on Work-Life Labour Income Gap Between Indigenous and Average Australians," NATSEM Working Paper Series 11/15, University of Canberra, National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling.
    6. June Y T Po & S V Subramanian, 2011. "Mortality Burden and Socioeconomic Status in India," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(2), pages 1-8, February.
    7. Itismita Mohanty & Robert Tanton, 2012. "A wellbeing framework with adaptive capacity," NATSEM Working Paper Series 12/17, University of Canberra, National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling.
    8. Sahoo, Anil Kumar & Madheswaran, S, 2014. "Healthcare utilisation behaviour in India: Socio-economic disparities & the effect of health insurance," Working Papers 317, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    9. Kennedy, Jonathan J. & King, Lawrence P., 2011. "Understanding the conviction of Binayak Sen: Neocolonialism, political violence and the political economy of health in the central Indian tribal belt," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(10), pages 1639-1642, May.
    10. Pathak, Praveen Kumar & Singh, Abhishek, 2011. "Trends in malnutrition among children in India: Growing inequalities across different economic groups," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(4), pages 576-585, August.
    11. Jayanta Kumar Bora & Rajesh Raushan & Wolfgang Lutz, 2018. "Contribution of Education to Infant and Under-Five Mortality Disparities among Caste Groups in India," VID Working Papers 1803, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
    12. Sandeep S. Nerkar & Ashish Pathak & Cecilia Stålsby Lundborg & Ashok J. Tamhankar, 2015. "Can Integrated Watershed Management Contribute to Improvement of Public Health? A Cross-Sectional Study from Hilly Tribal Villages in India," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-17, February.
    13. Christophe Z Guilmoto, 2022. "An alternative estimation of the death toll of the Covid-19 pandemic in India," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(2), pages 1-14, February.
    14. Anirudh Krishna & Kripa Ananthpur, 2013. "Globalization, Distance and Disease: Spatial Health Disparities in Rural India," Millennial Asia, , vol. 4(1), pages 3-25, April.
    15. Shanuga Cherayi & Justin P. Jose & Sreejith Sudhakar, 2019. "Children of Tribal Unwed Mothers and Their Non-Legitimate Origin: A Social Exclusion Perspective," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(2), pages 21582440198, June.
    16. Abhishek Singh & Praveen Kumar Pathak & Rajesh Kumar Chauhan & William Pan, 2011. "Infant and Child Mortality in India in the Last Two Decades: A Geospatial Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(11), pages 1-19, November.
    17. Perkins, Jessica M. & Khan, Kashif T. & Smith, George Davey & Subramanian, S.V., 2011. "Patterns and trends of adult height in India in 2005-2006," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 184-193, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0240096. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.