Determinant of Demand for Health Care Services among Rural Household in Ekiti State, Nigeria

Abstract

Rural health issues continue to be at the forefront of national and global health policies. Notwithstanding the national and global policy initiatives, rural health continues to be on the ascendancy in developing countries. This research work investigates the determinants of demand for health care services among rural household in Ekiti State of Nigeria. For appropriate policy targeting, it is imperative to investigate the factor that promote institutional health care delivery and those that retard it. Using descriptive and multinomial logit model to analyse collected data, it was discovered that majority of the respondents are males, married, in their middle age and preferred using Dispensary/Primary health care because of its proximity as source of health care services in the study area. The empirical analysis showed that, sex, marital status, household expenditure, and waiting time out of all the explanatory variables used were found to be significant factors affecting demand for health care services, among the rural households sourcing health care services from dispensary/Primary health care, private hospitals/clinics, patient medicine stores, general / teaching hospitals and traditional/spiritual homes. Patient medicine stores were used as the base category.

Keywords: Demand, Health Care, Service, Rural, Household, Nigeria.