| Summary: | Culture creates an exclusive prototype of the beliefs and perceptions as to what “health” or “illness” actually means. Health culture is the basis for health-seeking and health-promoting behavior. There are institutional arrangements within which heath behavior occurs and the impacts of socioeconomic, political, and physical background for their specific health beliefs and health institutions counts a lot. Further, this prototype of beliefs mainly influences how symptoms are documented, to what they are accredited, and how they are interpreted and how it also affects how and when modern traditional health services are sought by the people. Cultural differences in the recognition and interpretation of symptoms and in the use of health services are the topic of wealthy literature. This paper is based on the author's fieldwork experiences in different occasions about the various cultural aspects of the rural health-care issues in southern Karnataka, India. The fieldwork was done in certain rural parts of Karnataka, South India, using participant observation and data also synthesized using content analysis technique. It concludes that cultural differences among the rural people seeking health care are related to the social structures and relationships and the quantity of belief/disbelief in concerning traditional or Western medical care system. We found that the impediment in seeking suitable and timely health care were indifferently found among the individuals belonging to the various sociocultural groups characterized by the cultural exceptionality and customary and family authority.
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