Access and Utilization of Government Health Facilities by Rural Farm Households: Evidence from Kogi State, Nigeria Shaibu, U. M* and Ibrahim M. K Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Kogi State University, Anyigba, Nigeria *Corresponding Author Email: brave.monday@yahoo.com he study analyzed farm households’ access and utilization of government health facilities in Kogi State, Nigeria. Specifically, it described the socioeconomic characteristics of farm households, determined the level of accessibility to health facilities by farm households, and determined the factors that drive farm households’ utilization of government health facilities. A two staged random sampling technique was used to select one hundred (100) farm households and twenty (20) government-owned health care facilities from four Local Government Areas in the State. Data obtained through structured questionnaire and spot assessments were analyzed using descriptive statistics, indices of accessibility and binary logit regression model. The indices of accessibility revealed that there is unequal access to government health facilities (medical personnel and infrastructure) in the area. The binary logit model indicated that farming experience (p<0.01), distance to health centre (p<0.05), and cost of treatment (p<0.001) negatively influenced the utilization of government health facilities, while gender (p<0.05), education (p<0.05), and numbers of dependants (p<0.05) directly influenced government health care facilities utilization among farm households. It was suggested based on findings from the study that government needs to urgently engage and deploy more medical personnel and facilities to rural areas. Also, intervention programmes such as construction of good access will reduce travelling distance to health facilities. 1. Introduction There is a common maxim that health is wealth. Perhaps, good health is a prerequisite for a productive and economically viable life. Poor health condition could portend great hardships on farming households, including monetary expenditures, loss of labour, loss days and sometimes death. The health status of family labour affects their ability to work, and thus underpins the welfare of the household, including the children’s development (Asenso- Okyere et al., 2011). According to Titus et al (2015) poor health affects agricultural production. Most health challenges often go unattended to because of lack or inadequate access to healthcare. Access to healthcare services is critical for agricultural development. Ideally, farm households should be able to conveniently and confidently use services such as primary care, dental, behavioral health, emergency, and public health services. Farm households’ access to health care facilities involves adequate availability of medical professionals and related services and the ability to afford those services, through health insurance plans and/or to cover out-of-pocket expenses. Furthermore, the adequacy of care available and the ability of the farm population to pay for care is saddled with variety of factors that point to the uniqueness and differences among farm families, such as health status of farm household, riskiness of the farming environment, and the physical distances to health professional services and facilities (Ahearn and Mishra, 2012). Indicatively, health care reform in recent times promises to directly address the issue of access to affordable health care services. In as much as such reforms have not been widely available to farm households, it is much less clear how health care T Keywords: Healthcare, infrastructure, access, utilization, and government- owned International Journal of Agricultural Science, Research and Technology in Extension and Education Systems (IJASRT in EESs) Available online on: http://ijasrt.iau-shoushtar.ac.ir ISSN: 2251-7588 Print ISSN: 2251-7596 Online 2017: 7(1):11-17 Received: 22 February 2017 Reviewed: 18 March 2017 Revised: 20 March 2017 Accepted: 31 March 2017 Abstract