GIS Location-Allocation Model in Improving Accessibility to Health Care Facilities: A Case Study of Mt. Elgon Sub-County

The World Health Organization in its 58th World Health Assembly (WHO) called upon all nations to ensure that citizens should have -access to promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative health intervention at affordable costs-. International standards recommend that healthcare facilities should be located within 5 km distance. However, such recommendations failed to take into consideration the terrain, the states of rural roads and means of transport. In Mt. Elgon Sub-county, close to 200 people lose their lives annually as a result of delay in getting proper health care services which is largely attributed to poor roads, rough terrain and inadequate means of transport. There is a need to increase geographic accessibility to these facilities. Specific aims of the study include showing geographic distribution of health centers in Mt. Elgon District, examining accessibility to health care centers in the Sub-county, and to use GIS to propose optimum locations where future health centers ought to be constructed. It is well known that locating hospitals correctly is highly important in order to increase their accessibility. One method for identifying optimal locations in Euclidean space is a location-allocation model which minimizes the total travel time from supply locations (health centers) to the demand locations (human population). The types of data used include population data based on the 2009 national census, digital elevation model, and location of healthcare facilities, road network, disease statistics and Landsat image. From the findings, a total of 1 district hospital, a sub-district hospital and 10 health centers serve the entire Sub-County. Only 62.5 % of the population can access the existing healthcare facilities within a distance of 5.0km. Construction of 6 health centers was found to help in improving accessibility to 90.0 %. This ultimately can reduce the cost, pain and more so the number of deaths in the Sub-County linked to delays in accessing proper medical attention. The greatest limitation of the study rests on the idea that only health centers and District hospitals were used. Future studies should consider dispensaries and other private clinics in the analysis.