It’s a long, long walk: accessibility to hospitals, maternity and integrated health centers in Niger

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Abstract

Background

Ease of access to health care is of great importance in any country but particularly in countries such as Niger where restricted access can put people at risk of mortality from diseases such as measles, meningitis, polio, pneumonia and malaria. This paper analyzes the physical access of populations to health facilities within Niger with an emphasis on the effect of seasonal conditions and the implications of these conditions in terms of availability of adequate health services, provision of drugs and vaccinations. The majority of the transport within Niger is pedestrian, thus the paper emphasizes access by those walking to facilities for care. Further analysis compared the change in accessibility for vehicular travel since public health workers do travel by vehicle when carrying out vaccination campaigns and related proactive health care activities.

Results

The majority of the roads in Niger are non-paved (90%). Six districts, mainly in the region of Tahoua lack medical facilities. Patient to health facility ratios were best in Agadez with 7000 people served per health facility. During the dry season 39% of the population was within 1-hours walk to a health center, with the percentage decreasing to 24% during the wet season. Further analyses revealed that vaccination rates were strongly correlated with distance. Children living in clusters within 1-hour of a health center had 1.88 times higher odds of complete vaccination by age 1-year compared to children living in clusters further from a health center (p < 0.05). Three key geographic areas were highlighted where access to health centers took greater than 4 h walk during the wet and dry season. Access for more than 730,000 people can be improved in these areas with the addition of 17 health facilities to the current total of 504 during the dry season (260,000 during the wet season).

Conclusions

This study highlights critical areas in Niger where health services/facilities are lacking. A second finding is that population served by health facilities will be severely overestimated if assessments are solely conducted during the dry season. Mapped outputs can be used for future decision making processes and analysis.

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Most cited references 37

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Childhood vaccination in informal urban settlements in Nairobi, Kenya: Who gets vaccinated?

Martin K. Mutua, Elizabeth Kimani-Murage, Remare Ettarh (2011)

Background Recent trends in global vaccination coverage have shown increases with most countries reaching 90% DTP3 coverage in 2008, although pockets of undervaccination continue to persist in parts of sub-Saharan Africa particularly in the urban slums. The objectives of this study were to determine the vaccination status of children aged between 12-23 months living in two slums of Nairobi and to identify the risk factors associated with incomplete vaccination. Methods The study was carried out as part of a longitudinal Maternal and Child Health study undertaken in Korogocho and Viwandani slums of Nairobi. These slums host the Nairobi Urban Health and Demographic Surveillance System (NUHDSS) run by the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC). All women from the NUHDSS area who gave birth since September 2006 were enrolled in the project and administered a questionnaire which asked about the vaccination history of their children. For the purpose of this study, we used data from 1848 children aged 12-23 months who were expected to have received all the WHO-recommended vaccinations. The vaccination details were collected during the first visit about four months after birth with follow-up visits repeated thereafter at four month intervals. Full vaccination was defined as receiving all the basic childhood vaccinations by the end of 24 months of life, whereas up-to-date (UTD) vaccination referred to receipt of BCG, OPV 1-3, DTP 1-3, and measles vaccinations within the first 12 months of life. All vaccination data were obtained from vaccination cards which were sighted during the household visit as well as by recall from mothers. Multivariate models were used to identify the risk factors associated with incomplete vaccination. Results Measles coverage was substantially lower than that for the other vaccines when determined using only vaccination cards or in addition to maternal recall. Up-to-date (UTD) coverage with all vaccinations at 12 months was 41.3% and 51.8% with and without the birth dose of OPV, respectively. Full vaccination coverage (57.5%) was higher than up-to-date coverage (51.8%) at 12 months overall, and in both slum settlements, using data from cards. Multivariate analysis showed that household assets and expenditure, ethnicity, place of delivery, mother's level of education, age and parity were all predictors of full vaccination among children living in the slums. Conclusions The findings show the extent to which children resident in slums are underserved with vaccination and indicate that service delivery of immunization services in the urban slums needs to be reassessed to ensure that all children are reached.

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Barriers to prompt and effective malaria treatment among the poorest population in Kenya

Jane Chuma, Vincent Okungu, Catherine Molyneux (2010)

Background Prompt access to effective malaria treatment is central to the success of malaria control worldwide, but few fevers are treated with effective anti-malarials within 24 hours of symptoms onset. The last two decades saw an upsurge of initiatives to improve access to effective malaria treatment in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Evidence suggests that the poorest populations remain least likely to seek prompt and effective treatment, but the factors that prevent them from accessing interventions are not well understood. With plans under way to subsidize ACT heavily in Kenya and other parts of Africa, there is urgent need to identify policy actions to promote access among the poor. This paper explores access barriers to effective malaria treatment among the poorest population in four malaria endemic districts in Kenya. Methods The study was conducted in the poorest areas of four malaria endemic districts in Kenya. Multiple data collection methods were applied including: a cross-sectional survey (n = 708 households); 24 focus group discussions; semi-structured interviews with health workers (n = 34); and patient exit interviews (n = 359). Results Multiple factors related to affordability, acceptability and availability interact to influence access to prompt and effective treatment. Regarding affordability, about 40 percent of individuals who self-treated using shop-bought drugs and 42 percent who visited a formal health facility reported not having enough money to pay for treatment, and having to adopt coping strategies including borrowing money and getting treatment on credit in order to access care. Other factors influencing affordability were seasonality of illness and income sources, transport costs, and unofficial payments. Regarding acceptability, the major interrelated factors identified were provider patient relationship, patient expectations, beliefs on illness causation, perceived effectiveness of treatment, distrust in the quality of care and poor adherence to treatment regimes. Availability barriers identified were related to facility opening hours, organization of health care services, drug and staff shortages. Conclusions Ensuring that all individuals suffering from malaria have prompt access to effective treatment remains a challenge for resource constrained health systems. Policy actions to address the multiple barriers of access should be designed around access dimensions, and should include broad interventions to revitalize the public health care system. Unless additional efforts are directed towards addressing access barriers among the poor and vulnerable, malaria will remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa.

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The impact of distance of residence from a peripheral health facility on pediatric health utilisation in rural western Kenya.

Kim Lindblade, Maurice Ombok, Allan Audi … (2008)

To explore the impact of distance on utilisation of peripheral health facilities for sick child visits in Asembo, rural western Kenya. As part of a demographic surveillance system (DSS), censuses of all households in the Asembo population of 55,000 are conducted three times a year, data are collected at all outpatient pediatric visits in seven DSS clinics in Asembo, and all households are GIS-mapped and linkable to a child's unique DSS identification number. Between May 1, 2003 and April 30, 2004, 3501 clinic visits were linked to 2432 children among 10,973 DSS-resident children < 5 years of age. Younger children and children with more severe illnesses travelled further for clinic visits. The median distance travelled varied by clinic. The rate of clinic visits decreased linearly at 0.5 km intervals up to 4 km, after which the rate stabilised. Using Poisson regression, controlling for the nearest DSS clinic for each child, socio-economic status and maternal education, and accounting for household clustering of children, for every 1 km increase in distance of residence from a DSS clinic, the rate of clinic visits decreased by 34% (95% CI, 31-37%) from the previous kilometer. Achieving equity in access to health care for children in rural Kenya will require creative strategies to address a significant distance-decay effect in health care utilisation.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Int J Health Geogr

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Int J Health Geogr

Title: International Journal of Health Geographics

Publisher: BioMed Central

ISSN (Electronic): 1476-072X

Publication date Collection: 2012

Publication date (Electronic): 27 June 2012

Volume: 11

Page: 24

Affiliations

[1 ]GeoVISTA Center, Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

[2 ]Department of Epidemiology, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Article

Publisher ID: 1476-072X-11-24

DOI: 10.1186/1476-072X-11-24

PMC ID: 3515413

PubMed ID: 22737990

SO-VID: 7833b9c9-7f64-48f3-af9c-6d1d877c8739

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

It’s a long, long walk: accessibility to hospitals, maternity and integrated health centers in Niger

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Most cited references 37

Childhood vaccination in informal urban settlements in Nairobi, Kenya: Who gets vaccinated?

Barriers to prompt and effective malaria treatment among the poorest population in Kenya

The impact of distance of residence from a peripheral health facility on pediatric health utilisation in rural western Kenya.

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