| Summary: | One of the important parameters that distinguish the developed countries from the less
developed ones is the people’s health status, which in the latter is still very low. The less
developed countries, of which Nigeria is one, are characterised by high infant mortality rate, high
prevalence of communicable diseases as well as high level of illiteracy and ignorance (Egunjobi,
1996). The human, economic, and societal costs of ill health are immense. Millions of people die
prematurely from diseases that are preventable or curable (Carr, 2004). The effect of this is
much felt among the rural dwellers, who are living in areas that are provided with very few and
poor health care facilities.
This paper assesses the successful treatment rate of health facilities in Owo region, Nigeria by
rural dwellers with a view to promoting the patronage of these facilities in order to improve their
health conditions as means of boosting their economic and welfare status. Owo region habours
tertiary, secondary, and primary health care facilities and the region comprises of 2 urban
settlements and 193 rural settlements. This provides a study area that mirrors a typical Nigerian
situation.
Three different sets of questionnaires were designed and used for the collection of primary
data for the study. However, secondary data relevant to the study were sought. The primary data
were subjected to both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Furthermore, some of the
information were presented in form of tables, graphs, and others were subjected to statistical
test; a paired-sample t-test was used in testing the hypothesis which was used in comparing the
treatment success rate between the government-owned health facilities and private-owned
health facilities in the region.
Our findings revealed that the rural dwellers patronised both urban- based and rural -based
health facilities. Both the government, and private-owned health care facilities located in the rural
areas render very low and poor health care services. The success treatment rate at the
government-owned health care facilities is significantly different from that of the private-owned
facilities; yet the rural dwellers patronised the private-owned health care facilities, which are
mostly dominated by quacks. In view of the expectations from different health programmes such
as roll back malaria; fight against the scourge of HIV/AIDS; eradication of Tuberculosis, etc, the
paper calls for a deserved attentions to be given to the rural areas.
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