Accessibility to Improved Health Care as a Means to Economic Empowerment in Rural Kogi State, North Central, Nigeria.

The study focused on the Accessibility to Improved Health Facilities as a means of Economic Empowerment in Rural Kogi state. The data for the study was collected in 2009 from two primary sources; 160 rural households and 60 health care providers from randomly selected rural areas in the four agricultural zones in the state .The Index of accessibility revealed that there is inadequate and unequal access to improved health facilities in the study area. The result of the Regression analysis revealed that distance from available health care facilities negatively affects output, other significant variables are farm size, household size, educational status and labour used. The number of days of sickness, sex and age were not significant predictors of output. The policy implication arising from this study suggest that drastic measures be taken by the government, the communities themselves, non-governmental and other community based organizations to ensure equitable and adequate distribution of improved health facilities and qualified personnel among the different socio-economic groups in the State in other to increase economic empowerment.