An approach to the primary care service areas for the landmine victims in Colombia
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Dicelis, G.; 2Villaveces, J.; 3Barrero, V.
1UNIVERSITY OF SAO PAULO Email: gabriel@iag.usp.br
2OCHA Email: villaveces@un.org
3OCHA Email: barrero@un.org
Abstract
Colombia is one of the most affected countries by landmines/UXO in the world, due to a war that spans the last 50 years. Every year, the number of people killed and injured increases considerably. Many of the affected live in rural areas, where most accidents occur, far from the cities where healthcare facilities are concentrated. This paper presents a methodology to delineate hospital service areas based on GIS transportation network analysis, detecting those healthcare facilities closest to landmine victims in Colombia, and measuring accessibility to primary healthcare facilities for these victims. Input variables are from the Dirección para la Acción Integral contra Minas Antipersonal, the official landmine dataset, and include GPS referenced locations of accidents during the period from 1990-2012. We obtained a set of hospital service areas that show how accessibility varies with impedance; we found higher localization of care with an expected time of travel of less than an hour in the Andean region with few exceptions, and other regions with more than 3 hours of expected time of travel on average. These areas allow us to make note of the disparity in the accessibility in some regions of the country, especially where these explosive devices were installed with the intention of blocking access. GIS Service areas and closest facilities determination provide valuable information on patient travel patterns that merit more detailed analyses and demonstrated advantages in terms of cost-benefit and ease of upgrade, due to the current low cost of accessing GIS software.