Three hundred household heads were asked to report on a recent illness. Out of these households surveyed (patient cases) 43% (129) were males and 57% (171) were females. Forty-nine percent (49%) (147) of the patients had their ages ranging from

16 - 54 years and 15% (45) were 55 years of age and above and the rest were children under 16. The majority of those interviewed, 78% (234) had Primary school education followed by 8% (24) who had secondary school education, vocational or University level and the rest had no education. Ninety percent (90%) of those with secondary education were from Dar es Salaam region.

The disease cases that were encountered are summarized in Table 3:

Table 3: Diseases frequently consulted at health facilities.

* Some patients had more than one disease condition

Under others, the diseases, which were frequently encountered, could be categorised into the following groups: Injury, Malaria, Flu, hypertension and gynaecological problems. Just less than half of the population surveyed 38% (114) consulted public health facilities for their medical cases as shown in Table 4 below.

However, quite a good percentage (19%) of the population went for alternative complementary therapies like traditional medicine. Where consultation was sought, 77% of all cases medication was prescribed, while only 23% medication was not prescribed. For those cases where medicines were prescribed, 79% received/bought all prescribed drugs from the facilities while 12% got part of the prescribed drugs and 9% did not get any drugs. The main reason for not getting all the drugs for some patients include from amongst others, affordability due to high prices for the drugs especially in private facilities. The other reason is contributed by stock out duration

Table 4: Frequencies of health services sought