ArticleHealth services insights2025
Understanding Unmet Healthcare Needs in Nigeria: Implications for Universal Health Coverage.
Article in Health services insights, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Ethical issues in caring for older persons in Sub-Saharan Africa: a scoping review.BMC medical ethics · 2026Article
- Socioeconomic and geographic inequalities in unmet healthcare needs in Cambodia: evidence from a national cross-sectional study.International journal for equity in health · 2026Article
- Ethical Issues in Caring for Older Persons in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Scoping Review.Research square · 2026Article
- Availability, utilization patterns, and challenges of intraoperative C-arm fluoroscopy in orthopedic surgeries: a survey of orthopedic surgeons in Nigeria.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Exploring individual and structural factors influencing healthcare seeking behavior in the context of the Senegal's Universal Health Coverage program: a multilevel analysis from the ANRS-12399 Soignants Sénégal study.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Inequity in access to medications among communities in Eastern Ethiopia: a decomposition analysis.BMC health services research · 2025Article
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Abstract
Background: Many individuals in low- and middle-income countries with healthcare needs do not access the necessary, often lifesaving healthcare services. Existing universal health coverage (UHC) indicators do not account for a portion of the population with unmet healthcare needs. Objective: To estimate the prevalence, wealth-related inequality, and determinants of unmet healthcare needs in Nigeria using data from the nationally-representative Nigeria Living Standards Survey, 2018-2019. Methods: We analyzed data from a cross-sectional sample of 116 320 Nigerians from 22 110 households selected using multi-stage probability sampling. The outcome variable was self-reported unmet healthcare needs. We conducted concentration index (CIX) analyzes to assess wealth-related inequalities and performed multilevel logistic regression analysis to identify the determinants of unmet healthcare needs at the individual, household, and community levels. Results: The prevalence of unmet healthcare needs was 5.2% (95% CI: 5.0-5.5), representing about 11 million Nigerians (95% CI: 10.5-11.5 million). The most common reasons were high costs (unaffordability) and the perception that the illness or injury was not serious. Wagstaff-normalized CIX for unmet healthcare needs was pro-poor: -0.09730 for the general population and -0.10878 for those with chronic illnesses. Significant determinants of unmet healthcare needs include age (AOR: 0.99, 95% CI: 0.99-1.00), chronic illness (AOR: 8.73, 95% CI: 7.99-9.55), single-person households (AOR: 1.55, 95% CI: 1.20-2.02), poorest quintile households (AOR: 1.45, 95% CI: 1.19-1.78), and mildly (AOR: 1.17, 95% CI: 1.01-1.36) or moderately food-insecure households (AOR: 1.30, 95% CI: 1.11-1.51). Conclusion: A significant proportion of Nigerians, particularly the very poor, chronically ill, those living alone, or food insecure, have unmet healthcare needs. This highlights the necessity for targeted interventions to ensure vulnerable populations can access essential healthcare services. To progress toward UHC, the Nigerian health system must address critical issues related to healthcare accessibility.
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