Abstract:
In the study, the private sector was broadly categorised into Private for Profit (PFP) and Private Not for Profit (PNFP) providers. The PFP group contains both formal and informal providers. The formal providers are hospitals, health centres, clinics, nursing and maternity homes and drug shops. The informal providers include general merchandise shops and traditional healers. The participation of the private sector has a great contribution to healthcare outcomes; these include; equity, access, affordability, quality and efficiency. Looking at the role of private sector in healthcare provision, a descriptive study employing both qualitative and quantitative techniques had to be employed. However, other variables which influence outcomes were considered and these were patient attendance, staff numbers, qualification, drug availability and promptness of the service. The findings of the study indicate that private health care provision has increased accessibility to 75.5 percent although time of waiting for the services is still an issue in the private sector.
Generally, the population in rural areas access health care providers with low qualifications and or no qualifications at all, as compared to those in urban or adjacent to urban areas. The majority who were in this category were; females 16/21 (76.2%) and who were involved in service delivery as nurses, TBAs or midwives. Various factors noted to have contributed this nature of qualifications highly depended on the poor economy with high levels of poverty among the population and gender relations at family levels. The private providers were more concerned with curative rather than preventive services and the most common disease was malaria in which every provider irrespective of the nature of qualification was involved in its treatment. Other common diseases were RTI diarrhoea, worm infections and skin problems and those that were not common but cited were mental disorders, epilepsy, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. However challenges were realised especially to traditional providers who dealt with delivery of services without protective supplies like gloves, a situation which exposed them to the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS from their clients.
All in all, availability of both healthcare providers and drugs had a great influence in meeting the satisfaction of consumers in their health seeking behaviour. The more demand for the health care and willingness to pay for the services, the higher the motivation, the better the quality of services and the more the access to healthcare.
