Patterns of Healthcare Utilisation among Female Agricultural Workers in Wayanad: A Study of Available Facilities and Preferred Modes of Care

Women make up a large part of India's agricultural workforce because they work mainly in rural areas where farming remains the main economic activity. The extensive work of female agricultural workers leads to multiple forms of vulnerability because they perform demanding physical work while having insufficient money and restricted medical care access. The remote location and economic challenges of Wayanad in Kerala create additional healthcare access difficulties for its residents who belong to tribal communities and live in distant settlements across challenging terrain. The research examines healthcare patterns of female agricultural workers in Wayanad through an analysis of healthcare facility availability and their preferred treatment options and the social and economic elements that affect their medical care choices.The research design combined quantitative and qualitative methods to achieve complete results. The research team used multistage sampling to pick female agricultural workers from Wayanad panchayats for structured questionnaire administration. The questionnaire collected information about participants' social background and their work-related health problems and their healthcare choices and their opinions about service quality and their knowledge and use of government healthcare programs. The research team used frequency distribution and percentage analysis and cross-tabulation and chi-square tests and analysis of variance and logistic and multinomial regression models and cluster analysis to analyze the quantitative data. The research used statistical methods to study how social factors and work characteristics affect healthcare consumption patterns.The research results show that healthcare choices of participants face multiple obstacles which stem from both physical and mental perspectives. The public healthcare facilities remained the top choice because they offered affordable prices and convenient locations and well-known services yet their usage remained restricted because of extended waiting times and missing medicines and insufficient diagnostic capabilities and negative perceptions about staff conduct. Women who lived beyond three kilometers from public health centers chose to visit private or traditional medical facilities because they wanted to avoid long journeys and preserve their daily earnings. The national and state-level health schemes including Ayushman Bharat and PMJAY and Karunya exist but female agricultural workers show only average knowledge about them and they rarely use these programs because of information gaps and documentation issues and distrust in official systems.The workplace health issues that female agricultural workers experience result in frequent medical needs because they commonly develop musculoskeletal pain and fatigue and skin rashes and respiratory problems. The majority of participants postponed their medical visits until their condition reached an advanced stage because they needed to protect their earnings and fulfill their family duties.