COVID-19 lockdown and health seeking behaviour of aged persons in Kwara state, Nigeria

Abstract

The outbreak of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) shrouded in clinical uncertainties with no available vaccine at the onset left the medical communities with only the option of non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as the activation of lockdown, social distancing and adoption of personal protective equipment, to protect, slowdown transmissibility curves, save and preserve lives worldwide. These restrictive interventions thus further endanger aged individuals whose susceptibility to COVID-19 is clinically rated to be higher. It is against this background that this study, underpinned by cognitive-behavioral theory, investigated the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on the healthcare-seeking behaviour of aged individuals in Nigeria. This study deconstructed the COVID-19 Lockdown into the avoidance of healthcare facilities and self-medication of social media-touted drugs. The study employed a survey research design with a purposively distributed questionnaire to elicit data from a local government area from each of the three senatorial districts of Kwara State in Nigeria, scientific sampling technique of Krejcie and Morgan (1970) which recommends a sample size of 384 respondents for a population above one million was engaged, while simple regression analysis was done on extracted data. Findings from the study showed that the lockdown policy occasioned by the COVID-19 outbreak has significant effects on self-medication, social media-media touted drugs, and healthcare facilities voidance in the healthcare-seeking behaviour of the aged individual. The study thus recommends the urgent need for government, policymakers, and health stakeholders to evolve policies to enable aged individual to access healthcare during the pandemic while the ministries of Health should leverage on social media advocacy to water down misinformation overload that aged persons are vulnerable to.