Problems of Dental Health Care Services and Use in Ekiti State College of Health Sciences and Technology, Ijero Ekiti, Nigeria
- July 15, 2020
- Posted by: RSIS
- Categories: Health Sciences, IJRSI
International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI) | Volume VII, Issue VI, June 2020 | ISSN 2321–2705
Okunade R.A1, Oluwatuyi Shegun Victor2*, Alagbada Blessing2, Oluwatuyi Mayowa Funmilayo3
1Department of Dental Health, Ekiti State College of Health Sciences and Technology, Ijero, Nigeria
2Department of Public Health, Ekiti State College of Health Sciences and Technology, Ijero, Nigeria
3Department of Health Information Management, Ekiti State College of Health Sciences and Technology, Ijero, Nigeria
*Corresponding author
Abstract: Dental health services faces varied challenges in Nigeria today as the public gives little or no attention to dental health care. The authors identified various factors and problems facing the use of dental health care facility in the study area. This also covers the attitude of users (Mainly Students) to dental health care services despite being a health institution. We adopted a stratified sampling technique to select our sample while making use of primary and secondary data; revealing the statistics of patients recorded to have utilized dental health facility in the College from 2016-2019. One hundred and Ninety two (192) Questionnaires was administered to find out the problems and challenges of dental health care usage in the study area, a rating scale was designed and distributed to the dental health personnel in the clinic. Data obtained were analyzed using tables and graphical representations. The result revealed low utilization of dental health care facility in the study area; identified factors are lack of or poor awareness of the importance of dental health care which is the most identified factor, ignorance, unaffordable cost, painful procedure of dental health care services among others hence, there is need to improve on dental health care awareness as an essential health care service while also encouraging the government to subsidize dental health care services to make it affordable to users.
Key words: Problems, dental health, oral hygiene, Health facility
I. INTRODUCTION
Dental Health is a health care service rendered to patient seeking dental health care mostly due to dental health conditions or as a means of dental health medical check-up to forestall possible dental diseases. Dental care usage can be defined as the percentage of the population who access dental services over a Specified period of time[1]. Measures of actual dental care utilization describe the percentage of the population who has seen a dentist at different time intervals. Dental disease is a serious public health problem with universal distribution and affecting all age group [2]. However, despite this universal distribution, only a few seek dental care. Thus a wide gap is created between the actual dental needs of the population and the demand for dental care[3].
