Primary Health Service Distribution in Urban Areas Using GIS

Abstract

Dealt with the subject of the study through spatial distribution of the governmental health centers, for understanding its relationship with the numbers of population, health outcomes and access, in light of rapid urbanization worldwide. The crisis in the health sector of Sudan has seen very obvious since the last decade, particularly in Bahri locality. It turns out the requires of appropriate infrastructure because of lack of attention to proper and suitable planning for the distribution of health establishments, whereas there is a partial an imbalance in the distribution of health centers in the study area. The study was primarily examined the spatial distribution of governmental health centers in Bahri locality densely populated within the urban area (two administrative units) with a view to ascertaining whether there is any imbalance. The study is based on methodology; mainly on the descriptive approach in gathering information and databases belonging to health facilities ( provided by 20 governmental health centers) within the city, and using the 2008 population census data (National Bureau of Statistics(NBS)), and the analytical method by using spatial analysis using geographic information systems(GIS) which provide a set of tools for describing and understanding the changing spatial organization of health care, and study its efficiency in the region. After discussing the subject of research it became clear that there is an obvious disparity in the sites of health centers, found that there are some regions are defective because they do not have health center and therefore, the health facilities in the city are far away in terms of distance for the residents of those areas. Also the research has proven that health services do not fit the size of the population, where there are some health establishments that serve the number of patients larger than its capacity. This research also aims to assess the compatibility of the distribution of health services with the standards universally followed and established a clear vision for the distribution of such services in locality according to the scientific founding. In order to identify the impact of geographical factors, and identify deficit areas, thus assessing the possibility of access to health centers by evaluation of the services‘s locations used by residents as well as create digital maps to describe the current distribution of government health centers to be used in public health management for planning and organization of healthcare services.