Acute febrile illness and treatment seeking behavior among residents of a coastal area in South India

Fever is a common symptom during the monsoon in the coastal regions in India. Fever can lead to dangerous life threatening conditions in some cases if left untreated. Thus it is important to know the occurrence of acute febrile illness (AFI) and the treatment seeking behavior for the same among population of coastal areas. A community based observational study was conducted in coastal area of Villupuram district, Tamilnadu. Using a pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire, house-to-house survey was done by trained medical students, under the supervision of post graduate students and faculty. Occurrence of fever and treatment seeking behavior was studied in the resident population. Among 811 subjects, 15.9% (n = 129) reported to have one or more episodes of fever in the past 3 months. More males (17%) reported to have fever than females (14.6%). The reported incidence was highest among children of age group of less than 10 years (36.5%) followed by age group 10–19 years (17.80%). Average duration of fever was 5.4 ± 2.7 days. Nearly 20% of the participants with fever (n = 27) neither visited any health care facility nor reported to have any form of treatment. Most of the study participants (47.7%) preferred to access government health facility for their febrile illness that occurred last time. The reported incidence of the AFI was high among children as compared to adults and government primary health care facilities were the most preferred health care facility visited for febrile illness.