Determinants of maternal health care choice for children with pneumonia: evidence from Vietnam

ABSTRACT

This study aims to examine the determinants of maternal healthcare choice for children under five years old with pneumonia in Vietnam. The choices include taking their children to the hospitals, staying at home and using self-medication, or choosing traditional method by consulting a traditionalist or a spiritualist. We use the multinomial logit model to study a collection of 215 observations from onsite surveys, including different groups of ethnic minorities. The results indicate that ethnicity, residence, education and income level determine the mothers’ care seeking behaviors for children with pneumonia. The findings are expected to provide better insights into the behavior of the ethnic minority mothers when dealing with pneumonia and help the Vietnamese authorities alleviate this recurring disease.

KEYWORDS:

• Pneumonia
• maternal healthcare choice
• ethnic minorities
• hospital presentation
• multinomial logit model
• Vietnam

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the support the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Ethical approval

This study receives Decision No. 3661/QĐ-ĐHKTQLKH on Ethical Approval for Research from the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City on 30 December 2019. The scan copy of the Decision is submitted as supplementary materials.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data used in this manuscript is available from the corresponding author upon request.