Managing Diabetes at Household Level; A case study of Diabetic Patients in Rawalpindi City

Abstract

In the middle- and low-income developing countries like Pakistan treatment of diabetes is very expensive and people can’t afford the cost of medications in this way households face many financial hardships. Therefore, the study was focused on how cultural myths influence the patients in managing diabetes at household level to avoid the use of medications. The purpose of this research is to study the relationship of treatment cost and household budget and further to explore the cultural myths in regards to managing diabetes. The study was carried out in Cantonment area of Rawalpindi city. Further the research study was qualitative in nature and selecting 20 diabetic patients through purposive sampling technique of non-probability sampling type. Moreover, for this study research methodology was exploratory and data were collected through face-to-face interview. Interview has been recorded with due permission of the respondents and transcribed in order to analyze or generate various themes. In this study findings identified in six theme, mode of treatment, affordability of treatment, bearing of expenditure, budget disturbance, Cultural belief and practices, and Cultural myths in management of diabetes. these were found that patients who bear expenses on self without any health insurance or not having any panel of hospital facing issue to manage the diabetes. Due to costly medicines their household budget was badly disturbed and most of them let the visit of doctor, use medication only once in a day just to pass the whole month from these medicines. Further most of the patients never conduct hba1c test regularly and the reason is non-affordability of test cost. Only those who are on the panel of certain hospitals conduct this test after every three months. Furthermore, due to costly medications patients looking for alternative solutions as they choose cultural belief and myths to control diabetes just to satisfy the self.