Spatial accessibility to basic public health services in South Sudan

Macharia, Peter M. and Ouma, Paul O. and Gogo, Ezekiel G. and Snow, Robert W. and Noor, Abdisalan M. (2017) Spatial accessibility to basic public health services in South Sudan. Geospatial Health, 12 (1): 510. ISSN 1827-1987

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Abstract

At independence in 2011, South Sudan’s health sector was almost non-existent. The first national health strategic plan aimed to achieve an integrated health facility network that would mean that 70% of the population were within 5 km of a health service provider. Publically available data on functioning and closed health facilities, population distribution, road networks, land use and elevation were used to compute the fraction of the population within 1 hour walking distance of the nearest public health facility offering curative services. This metric was summarised for each of the 78 counties in South Sudan and compared with simpler metrics of the proportion of the population within 5 km of a health facility. In 2016, it is estimated that there were 1747 public health facilities, out of which 294 were non-functional in part due to the on-going civil conflict. Access to a service provider was poor with only 25.7% of the population living within one-hour walking time to a facility and 28.6% of the population within 5 km. These metrics, when applied sub-nationally, identified the same high priority, most vulnerable counties. Simple metrics based upon population distribution and location of facilities might be as valuable as more complex models of health access, where attribute data on travel routes are imperfect or incomplete and sparse. Disparities exist in South Sudan among counties and those with the poorest health access should be targeted for priority expansion of clinical services.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Geospatial Health
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2700/2701
Subjects:
?? health facilitiessouth sudanspatial accessibilitymedicine (miscellaneous)health(social science)geography, planning and developmenthealth policygeneral medicinemedicine(all) ??
ID Code:
176281
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
11 Oct 2022 14:45
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
16 Jul 2024 11:54