Socioeconomic status and access to health care in obio/akpor lga, rivers state, Nigeria

Background: Good health is one of the requirements and expectation of every nation that care for the welfare of her citizens and hence an indicator of productive life, socially and economically balanced society. Access to healthcare facilities could be determined in terms of, availability of medical industry in an area, location of healthcare facilities, quality of services offered by health workers and affordability of medical bills. Socio-economic status (SES) can be looked upon as class standing of an individual or group. This study examined the relationship that exists between SES and access to healthcare. Methods: The study was done at five (5) Model Primary Health Centers (MPHC), drawn by ballot from the pool of 14 MPHC, using a cross sectional quasi experimental design. The sample size of 212 respondents was proportionally and statistically distributed among the five selected MPHC. The data were generated with an interviewer administered semi-structured questionnaire. Analysis was done with SPSS (17.0) package. Results: Female gender (60%) are the majority, with most of the respondent within aged 31-40 years. Majority of the respondent were educated. The socio-economic characteristics that were significantly associated with access to healthcare were education (rho = 0.493; p-value = 0.000), income level (rho = 0.249; p-value = 0.000); gender (rho = 0.940; p-value = 0.000). Conclusions: The study revealed that SES is significantly related to access to healthcare; and healthcare facilities should be located nearer to the people with minimal class and political considerations that may disadvantage the poor masses.