A rapid and reproducible picture of open access health facility data in Africa to support the COVID-19 response.

Andy South,Anelda Van Der Walt,Peter M Macharia,Joseph Maina,Robert W Snow,Ahmadou Dicko,Emelda A Okiro,Mark Herringer

doi:10.12688/wellcomeopenres.16075.1

Abstract

Background: Open data on the locations and services provided by health facilities in some countries have allowed the development of software tools contributing to COVID-19 response. The UN and WHO encourage countries to make health facility location data open, to encourage use and improvement. We provide a summary of open access health facility location data in Africa using re-useable code. We aim to support data analysts developing software tools to address COVID-19 response in individual countries. In Africa there are currently three main sources of such data; 1) direct from national ministries of health, 2) a database for sub-Saharan Africa collated and published by a team from KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme and now hosted by WHO, and 3) The Global Healthsites Mapping Project in collaboration with OpenStreetMap. Methods: We searched for and documented official national facility location data that were openly available. We developed re-useable open-source R code to summarise and visualise facility location data by country from the three sources. This re-useable code is used to provide a web user interface allowing data exploration through maps and plots of facility type. Results: Out of 53 African countries, seven provide an official open facility list that can be downloaded and analysed reproducibly. Considering all three sources, there are over 185,000 health facility locations available for Africa. However, there are differences and overlaps between sources and a lack of data on capacities and service provision. Conclusions: We suggest that these summaries and tools will encourage greater use of existing health facility location data, incentivise further improvements in the provision of those data by national suppliers, and encourage collaboration within wider data communities. The tools are a part of the afrimapr project, actively developing R building blocks to facilitate the use of health data in Africa.

Highlights

Evidence-based health planning and decision making requires information on the location of health facilities and the services they provide
We provide a summary of open access health facility location data in Africa using re-useable code
The United Nations is calling for countries to disseminate health related data and incentivise use in the current COVID-19 pandemic: “National statistical offices need to focus on disseminating open data in a way that facilitates and incentivizes data use to contribute to the fight against the pandemic

Summary

Introduction

Evidence-based health planning and decision making requires information on the location of health facilities and the services they provide. This is the case both in the current epidemic and more routine times. In this paper we produce a reproducible picture of current open access data on health facility locations in Africa. We consider our main target audience to be data analysts in individual countries that wish to access and use health facility data to aid the response to COVID-19. Open data on the locations and services provided by health facilities in some countries have allowed the development of software tools contributing to COVID-19 response. We provide a summary of open access health facility location data in Africa using re-useable code.

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