The spatial distribution of health services in Zambia

While a lack of resources has been identified as a major issue in the health sector in many developing countries, little is known about misallocation of health resources within countries as a hindrance to health care provision. Existing evidence on the distribution of health workers across regions in African countries points towards large spatial imbalances and some have argued that these “imbalances (…) are a bigger issue than national deficiencies” (Lemiere et al. 2013).

This project seeks to assess spatial imbalances in the supply of health services in Zambia. Several administrative data sets on the universe of health facilities in the country are combined in order to describe the distribution of health services relative to demand at the micro-level. The resulting integrated database shall support policy decisions and enable future research on the optimal allocation of health resources.