ABSTRACT
Primary health care services are very important to making health care more accessible to rural areas, this study has ascertained that these services are available but not fully used in the study area due to various reasons. This study has also revealed the perception of Primary Health Care of the respondents. This study has also showed the constraints faced in accessing Primary Health Care services greatly affect the use of these services. These constraints need to be solved effectively to encourage use of PHC services and thus gradually change preconceived perceptions of the people.
Data was collected using a well structured questionnaire administered to 80 respondents from five communities in Egor Local Government Area. Simple random sampling techniques and Purposive sampling techniques were used in selecting the respondents for this study. The first stage involves the use of Purposive sampling technique to select five communities which have Primary Health Care facilities and as such will be relevant to the study, the second stage involves the use of random sampling to select respondents for the study from each community to get a total of 80 respondents. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics such as frequency count, percentages, means and standard deviation, and pearson product moment correlation.
The demographic characteristics significant to respondents’ use of primary health care services are Age and Sex at 5% and 1% respectively.
The constraints faced by the respondents include: lack of quality equipment (mean = 2.2875), rude and slow health workers (mean = 2.8750), inability of the personnel to respond to patients on time (mean = 2.4750), poor water supply at the PHC center (mean = 2.3125), inadequate supply of drugs (mean = 2.2000), dirty and unconducive environment (mean = 2.1375), poor roads to the facility (mean = 2.0125) and irregular immunization (mean = 2.8500).
The recommendations include: the government should hire more personnel including health care providers and security workers to ensure efficient running and safety of the centers and also to enable the centers stay open 24 hours everyday, the government should provide high quality equipment and materials for use. It has been observed in many centers that there was insufficient equipment to work with and the workers in some centers contribute personal funds to purchase these equipment that should be provided by the government, home visits by the health care personnel should be increased to encourage people to make use of primary health care services, the primary health care center buildings and environment should be renovated and kept clean to prevent illness and negative perception from the people and the government should fix roads surrounding PHC centers to improve accessibility, improve power supply and sink boreholes to make water accessible.
