UTILIZATIONAND BARRIERS TO USE OF PRIMARY HEALTH CARE SERVICES AMONG ATTENDEES IN IJERO-EKITI, EKITI STATE, NIGERIA

Primary Health Care Centre (PHC) serves as the first contact between individuals and the health system, offering essential services such as immunization, maternal and child health care, treatment of common illnesses, and referrals to higher levels of care. Since its formal adoption in 1978, the PHC model has evolved through global commitments like the Astana Declaration (2018), which reaffirmed the importance of integrated, people-centered care and called for renewed investment in PHC as a foundation for resilient health systems. Despite PHC being the foundation of Nigeria’s health system, gaps in consistent utilization persist across many communities.This study therefore determined the utilization and barriers to use of PHCservices among attendees in Ijero Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria.A cross-sectional descriptive research design was used for the study and the respondents were adult attendees. The sample size was 360 but 357 were recruitedwith a multistage sampling technique used to select the respondents. A structured and expert validated instrument was used for collection of data. Frequency counts, percentages, and chi-square tests were used for data analysis at asignificance level of 0.05.The mean age was 37.5±1.Analysis of the data revealed that 110 (30.8%) respondents frequently made use of the PHC services while the major barriers were long waiting time 268 (%), attitude of health care workers210 (58.8%) and drug unavailability 230 (64.4%).