Authors : A.E. Oguntade and N.A. Yusuph
Abstract: Infrastructure plays a significant role in socio-economic development. Health infrastructure has direct impact on the health status of both agricultural and non-agricultural labour in the rural economy. For agricultural labour, improved health status tends to increase the disposable labour days thus leading to increased agricultural productivity, production and income. The distribution of health infrastructure between rural/agricultural and urban Local Government Areas (LGAs) should therefore be devoid of inequality in order not to enhance the disparity in the development of the rural and urban areas. The study assessed the distribution of health infrastructure in Lagos State, Nigeria using the dissimilarity index and gini coefficient, among others. The results show that inequality exists in the distribution of health infrastructure and that the rural/agricultural Local Government Areas are disadvantaged. The inequality is much higher in the distribution of private sector investments in health infrastructure compared to public sector investments. This implies that the policy of increased role for the private sector in the provision of socio-economic services by government may put the rural/agricultural LGAs at a disadvantage, if applied unrestrained to the health sector.
A.E. Oguntade and N.A. Yusuph , 2007. Health Infrastructure Inequality-A Case Study of Lagos State, Nigeria. The Social Sciences, 2: 51-55.