Accessibility mapping of health facilities in rural Ghana

Despite collaborative efforts by government, CSOs and the private sector in the provision of health facilities in Ghana, a substantial proportion of communities in rural Ghana still have poor accessibility to basic health services. Using a mixed approach, this paper presents an overview of geographic accessibility to health care services in Wa West District. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with randomly selected 100 households to ascertain their perception on accessibility to health services. Based on the major means of transport to each level of health service, GIS was used to model communities accessibility to health facilities. The findings revealed that, three levels of health services - CHPS, Health Centres and District Hospital exist in Wa West District. Over 50% of communities were found to have high accessibility to CHPS compounds and Health Centres because of their widespread distribution. In contrast, only few communities (4%) have high physical access to District hospital. Poor conditions of roads were a major barrier in household's accessibility to District hospital. The findings therefore underscore the need for an integrated and cross-sectoral approach to improve accessibility to health care services.