Comparative Analysis of Facility Present Condition of Selected Schools and Hospitals in Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

This article investigates the comparative analysis of the facility present condition (FPC) of selected health and educational buildings in Rivers State. State funded hospitals and schools (14 functional out of 23 general hospitals and 2 out of 3 tertiary schools) were selected for the study. The general hospital is a secondary health facility designed to bring health care services close to citizens especially those in rural communities. These facilities were inherited from the colonial masters in 1960. An assessment visit in2016 found the 23 general hospitals completely dilapidated and abandoned. However, rehabilitation intervention was carried out by the government in 2020. This scenario was quite different with the schools. Thus, this study is to increase the awareness of facility operators on building maintenance. A p urposive sampling technique was used in selecting the hospitals and schools, while simple random sampling was adopted for questionnaire distribution to 300 respondents. The instrument reliability and validity were ascertained using Cronbach Alpha and face validity. The instrument obtained information about the status of the facility present condition. SPSS and Microsoft Xlstat were used to obtain the mean and frequency distribution of the responses. Comparative analysis was conducted to understand the FPC of the schools and hospitals. Z-test was deployed to ascertain if there was a significant difference in the FPC between the two institutions. Checklist was adopted to confirm the findings. The r esult from the survey showed that schools have better FPC than hospita ls.