Evaluating Spatial Accessibility And Optimal Location Of Community Health Center Using Gis Techniques, A Case Of Yeka Sub City, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Abstract

The main topic of this study is entitled as Evaluating Spatial Accessibility to Health Center and Optimal Location of Community Health Center Using GIS Techniques: A Case of Yeka Sub City,Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Many people who live in the periphery of most cities in the world lack efficient transportation; and in emergencies, time required to reach a health centers become a major issue. In study area, Yeka sub city, health facilities are unevenly distributed and they are scarce for peripheral dewellers. As national standard, the existing community health centers are not fully accessible physically, the reason behind is, uneven scattering of the population in fact is the topographical location of the Sub-City. The general objective set to deal with the problem is to make analysis and find results on balancing the distribution of health center and demands of the society for the services in theentire area of Yeka. The study profoundly helps both the government and the society in placements and use of health center in the research area based on scientific reasons. Service area analysis method supported by GIS techniques of network analyst and spatial analyst method (such as euclidean distance, reclassify and weighted overlay analysis) were used. In this study the followind data were used, such as Road network, Existing health center and population for service area analysis in network anlyasis in terms of distance and time, whereas DEM, population, existing health center, schools, manufacturing site, religious institution, river, main road, population and land use data were used. In service area anysis, road network converted in to network dataset. In the spatial anlyst, except DEM and Land use, the rest data were analyzed through proximity analysis and reclassified in to suitability mode. To select optimal site weighted overlay method were used. In the result it is identified that health centers are not evenly distributed resulting in densely situated around infrastructures such as transport facility, road network and population. In the anaylsis, in the national standard, about 80%(368,203) population were health center service accessed, whereas 20%(87735) people had not accessed. Based on the objectives suitable site selection was analyzed, there were ten criteria? was used. Therefore, highly suitable sites were selected. The outputs were mapped spatial accessibility in terms of traveling distance, time, population coverage and the new selected health center site .