Accessibility Analysis of Primary Healthcare Services in Mysore District Using Geospatial Techniques

Abstract

The accessibility of healthcare centers is one of the most important indicators for measuring the efficiency of a healthcare system. Accessibility is a complex indicator that reflects the number of health care institutions, their geographical distribution and the impact of different types of barriers social, Economic and culture (1). Primary health centre which acts as the first level of contact between the population and health centers. It acts has a cornerstone of rural health services. Primary healthcare is affordable, accessible and appropriate care for the particular needs of a given population especially in rural areas. The main objectives of the study are to study the spatial distribution pattern and delineation of service area of primary health centers; to identify the gap between the availability and accessibility of health services. The base map of study area has been geo-referenced and digitized using ARC GIS software. The Global positioning system (GPS) was adopted to take the coordinate of all the existing primary health centers in the study area. Simple Euclidean buffers are mapped and analyzed to define the service area, Thiessen polygon and Nearest Neighbour Technique was used here to identify the availability of health services in Mysore district. The results reveal that, the spatial variation in the distribution of PHC’s, which were not evenly distributed across the study area and there is scarcity in the availability of workforce among the study area.