ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to assess rural households accessibility to health care and agricultural resource use efficiency in Ikwuano Local Government Area of Abia State. The specific objectives of the study were to identify the health care services available in the study area and characterize the rural fanning population in relation to the health services available to them, to examine accessibility of health care services and incidence of illnesses among rural farmers, to assess the relationship between health care accessibility and level of farm output / recourses use efficiency in the study area. Primary date were obtained using structured questionnaire administered on eighty rural farming households. Analytical tools utilized were frequency counts, percentages and regression. Findings reveals that the different types of health care facilities available to the rural communities includes, the modern as well as traditional health care facilities. The modern health care facilities were general hospital, health centers and chemist stores, while the traditional health care facilities identified included the services of herbalists, bone setters, traditional birth attendants and spiritual (Christian priest) healers of the 80 respondents studied,66.25 percent respondents have access to modern health care facilities while 33.75 percent respondents have access to traditional health care facilities. Resource use efficiency analysis shows that farmers who had access to modern health care facilities were efficient in the use of labour and planting materials, while those with traditional health care facilities were not efficient in the use of resources based on allocative efficiency.