Health Seeking Behaviour among Tribes of India P. Venkatramana 1 and S.A.A. Latheef 2 1 Discipline of Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, IGNOU, New Delhi, India 2 School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India KEYWORDS Gaddis. Garo. Gond. Kattunayakan. Khasi. Konda Reddy ABSTRACT Health seeking behaviour are those activities commenced by individuals in response to a symptom experience. Health seeking behaviour is a major concern in tribal health. In this review paper, the researchers presented evidence on health seeking behaviour and its barriers. A significant number of tribal people still use home remedies and approach traditional medicine practitioner /healers. If not cured, they approach private clinics. Barriers for health seeking behaviour identified among tribes of India when visiting hospitals were inaccessibility, lack of infrastructure, manpower and their behaviour, inconvenient visiting hours, disease condition. Also personal issues like fear of losing daily earning, cultural beliefs, affordability, illiteracy and unacceptability. Address for correspondence: Dr. P. Venkatramana Discipline of Anthropology, School of Social Sciences Indira Gandhi National Open University New Delhi 110 068, India E-mail: pvenkatramana@ignou.ac.in INTRODUCTION Health seeking behaviour may be defined as those activities commenced by individuals in re- sponse to a symptom experience (Amuthavallu- van and Devarapalli 2011). Understanding the health seeking behavior can be helpful to pre- vent delay in diagnosis, improve patient compli- ance and promote health improvement strategies (Jayaprakash and Saravanan 2015). Studies on health seeking behaviour are more useful from a health care system development perspective (Jayaprakash and Saravanan 2015). Healthcare- seeking behaviour has emerged as a tool to tack- le perceived ill health by taking remedial actions (Chandwani and Pandor 2015). Health seeking be- haviour depends upon the severity of illness, the availability of health care facilities, the access to health care services and the economic condition of the individual/household and other such fac- tors (Jayaprakash and Saravanan 2015). Health seeking behaviour is a major concern of tribal health apart from inaccessibility to health services (Jain et al. 2015) and an important issue in health man- agement (Singh et al. 2016). It was observed that health seeking behaviour determine the morbidity and mortality (Basu and Kshatriya 1990). Hence, study on the health seeking behaviour and identi- fication of its barriers among the tribes of India may lead to the improvement in the health status among tribal people of India. Objective To study the health seeking behaviour and to find out the barriers for health seeking behaviour among the tribes of India. METHODOLOGY Data for the present review paper were drawn from original articles available on ‘Google’/ ‘Goo- gle scholar’ search engine using keywords such as “health seeking behaviour of tribes in India”. OBSERVATIONS AND DISCUSSION The research results available on health seek- ing behavior is reviewed among the tribal popu- lations of India reported from 1996-2017. In this report, studies on health seeking behavior on tribes spread in 14 states of India like Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Manipur, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Karnata- ka, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Megha- laya and Himachal Pradesh were taken into con- sideration. These studies encompassed tribes such as Koyas, Konda Reddy (Rajamma et al.1996), Bhatara (Mahapatro and Kalla 2000), Gadoliya Lohars, Rabaris, Nayaks, Kanjars, Sansis, Nats, Kalbeliyas (Sachdev 2012), Bhils (Jain and Agrawal 2005) , Paite (Guite and Acharya 2006), Kuruchiyas (Nelson 2011), PRINT: ISSN 0972-639X ONLINE: ISSN 2456-6799 Stud Tribes Tribals, 17(1-2): 1-7 (2019) DOI: 10.31901/24566799.2018/17.1-2.413 © Kamla-Raj 2019