Quality of care in primary health centres of Tafa Local Government Area of Niger state, North central Nigeria; the clients' perspective.

BACKGROUND: Quality of care is one of the major public health concerns in this 21st century. We tried to assess the clients' perspectives of quality of care provided by the primary health centres of Tafa Local Government Area in Niger state North central Nigeria.

METHODOLOGY: A cross sectional descriptive study was conducted among the 273 clients utilizing services in the 3 primary health centres of Tafa Local Government Area of Niger state in the North central geo-political zone of Nigeria.

RESULTS: Result from the research shows that more than one-third (39%) of the clients attending the primary health centres were children within the age group of 0-9 months. Outpatient services for common health care problems such malaria and diarrhoea account for more than onethird (35.7%) of the total clients load. On their experiences during receiving care all the clients (100%) were seen by the health worker, more than half of the clients (57%) obtained all drugs prescribed, three-quarter (76%) were satisfied with questions asked during consultation and less than half (44%) were examined. Furthermore, more than four-fifth (83%) were informed on how to take drugs and 62% were informed of when to come back. More than one-third of the respondents (36.7%) waited for about 1-3 hrs.. When their overall satisfaction was placed on the Likert's 5-point scale, 3% highly satisfied, 8% were satisfied, 39% fairly satisfied, 29% dissatisfied and 9% were highly dissatisfied.

CONCLUSION: In conclusion, despite the level of advancement attained in health care in the 21st century which is regarded as the era of Total Quality Management, Quality of care in primary health care centres leaves much to be desired. This therefore calls for an urgent, deliberate, sustained and purposeful effort to institutionalize Quality Assurance mechanism as an integral part of our health system.