Health Care Women Int. 1998 Jul-Aug; 19(4): 343-60.

The use of formal and informal health care by female adolescents in eastern Nepal.

Gibbon M.

Department of Health and Social Care, Southbank University, London, England. gibbonmj@sbu.ac.uk

I am presenting the background and interim results of an ongoing study in Eastern Nepal where at present the adolescent females do not use the formal health sector to the same extent as men. Suggested reasons for this include lack of awareness (literacy rates among women are 17%), lack of access, lack of time, and the cost and the quality of services offered. Women are more likely to visit traditional health practitioners, and very little research has been done to find out why this is the case. I also examine the access of rural adolescent females to health services and the policy process. The researcher involves the women in the research so that they can actively participate in the decision-making process and in setting health priorities. The research is based on a reconstituted form of participatory rural appraisal (PRA) known as participatory appraisal of needs and development of action (PANDA). This is a framework which has been developed out of PRA and has been used in developing countries to enable local people to obtain, share, and analyze their life conditions and to plan and act according to that knowledge.