MAPPING OF HEALTH CARE FACILITIES AND DATABASE CREATION

USING REMOTE SENSING AND GIS IN IDAH LOCAL GOVERNMENT

AREA, KOGI STATE, NIGERIA

Adamu, F., Danjuma, U. and Ojogbane, S., S.

Department of Surveying and Geo-informatics, Federal Polytechnic, Idah
Correspondence: fatimaattah9@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
Digital mapping of health care centers using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant resource
for health planning and health services delivery, particularly at the local level. The ability to visualize the
spatial distribution of health status determinants and indicators, can be a powerful resource for Government
to improve on health care facilities and distribution. Mapping health care centers in Idah metropolis and
for other agencies, are important steps towards enabling individuals and communities to improve their
health and increase their control over it. A google Earth Mosaic image was used to digitize health care
points which were located using Handheld GPS and Mobile topographer software for Android phones
and an ArcGis 10.1 software for digitizing, creation of database and queries creation or analysis. It is
discovered that the Government has very low medical attention for the local government and we have
very low level of Professional Medical Personnel and very high level of Nurses running private
hospitals.

Keywords: Digital Mapping, Geographic Information System, Spatial, Image, GPS Health,
Distribution.

INTRODUCTION Accessibility to health care is a multidimensional

concept and can be defined as the ability of a
An important aspect of Nigerian health
population to access healthcare services. It varies
policy that requires timely evaluation, is
across space because neither health professionals
accessibility to Primary Health Care (PHC)
nor residents are uniformly distributed (Lou and
facilities, especially in rural areas. Thus, their
Wang 2003).
locations and spatial structures influence
accessibility and utilization, but neither is The geographic inventory of healthcare
distributed evenly in space (Wang, 2006). comprises the analysis of spatial organization
(names, type, and locations) of health services, how
A health care facility is defined as a unit owned by
and why spatial features changes over time and
public and private authorities as well as voluntary
how people gain access to health services (Fortney,
organizations and which provides health care
Rost, Zhang and Warren, 1999). Khan (1992),
services, hospitals, health and maternity centers.
identified five varied dimensions of access which
Consequently,
were classified into spatial components, namely;
Onokerhoroye (1999), defined health care accessibility, availability, affordability,
facility as all units owned by public and private
accommodation and acceptability. Access describes
authorities as well as voluntary organizations and people’s ability to use health services when and
which provides health care services including where they are needed. Geographic access is an
hospitals, health and maternity centers. essential feature of an overall health system. It is
A healthy population and access to important for health service and stakeholders to
healthcare services are significant factors develop accurate measures of physical access to
influencing economic development and prosperity. health (McLafferty, 2003). For medical conditions

Journal of Management and Technology Vol. 15, Sept. 2019 109

 Adamu, F., Danjuma, U. and Ojogbane, S., S.
that require regular contact with service providers, of problems due to paucity nature of data.
travel time and distance can create barriers to However, with the introduction of Geographic
effective service use (Fortney et al., 1999). GIS is Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing
being used to create better measures of techniques, data is now available for effective study
geographical access and to analyze geographical particularly on accessibility and distribution pattern
inequalities in access as well as those patterned in any geographic location. Currently, the
along social and economic lines. increasing availability of Geographical Information
It is essential to ensure that the population, Systems (GIS) in health organizations together with
health care facilities and transportation the proliferation of spatially disaggregate data, has
infrastructure are spatially located where led to a number of studies that have been concerned
accessibility to frictions are less to ensure equal and with developing measures of access to healthcare
easy access. There are many different services (Higgs, 2009).
conceptualizations of accessibility to healthcare
facilities, and many different measures of STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
accessibility have been proposed and used in The urban populace in Nigeria carries a high
literature (Talen and Anselin, 1998; Hewko, 2001). number of immigrants with very limited access to
In Nigeria, health care provision is a health facilities, yet they lack necessary
concurrent responsibility of the three tiers of accessibility to health care information and data
government. However, because Nigeria operates a management. Many Nigerians encounter a range of
mixed economy, private health care providers have service delivery and health problems when they try
also a visible role to play in health care delivery. to access healthcare. Such problems range from
The federal government's role is mostly limited to information about locations of health facilities, type
coordinating the affairs of the University Teaching of health facility found within a particular area and
Hospitals and Federal Medical Centers while the network accessibility to these facilities.
State Government manage the various general In the year 1987, the federal government of
hospitals while the local government focuses on Nigeria launched the Primary Health Care (PHC)
dispensaries (Primary Health Care), which are system as the bedrock of the health policy with the
regulated by the federal government through the optimism that the system will reduce substantially
National Primary Health Care Development the morbidity and mortality which afflicted our
Authority (NPHCDA). Varying spatial distribution population by frequent outbreaks of preventable
of the population, healthcare facilities and diseases. Several strategies were put in place to
transportation infrastructure in an area often lead to achieve these laudable dreams which include:
in- accessibility to healthcare facilities, which in health education and health promotion
turn, would result in disadvantaged location and programmes, provision of infrastructure to
communities having poor spatial accessibility to healthcare centers; provision of adequate staff
needed healthcare facilities (Ahmad, 2012). through training and recruitment, implementation,
Thus, geographically based healthcare the rollback malaria through the promotion and use
research commonly utilizes methodologies and of insecticide treated nets (ITNs), especially to
measurements attainable using GIS which include children and pregnant women; improved nutritional
network model (vector representation) and raster status of children and increase in the rate of
model (raster representation). These methods are immunization coverage to raise awareness on
used to measure distances and traGel time between HIV/AIDS pandemic and tuberculosis control
the locations of health facilities and people (Jones, programme and the reduction of the present rate of
Ashby, and Naidoo 2010; Delamater, et al., 2012). infant and maternal mortality. These are done
Previous studies of this type have faced a number through the management of childhood illness and
reproductive health programme. Tragically, two
Journal of Management and Technology Vol. 15, Sept. 2019 110
Mapping of Health Care Facilities and Database Creation Using Remote Sensing And GIS in Idah Local Government
Area, Kogi State, Nigeria
decades since the introduction of the PHC, the
provision of the PHC centres has not been without
accessibility difficulties (Laah and Mamman,
2002).

Study Area
The study area is Idah metropolis. Idah is
located in Kogi State. It is one of the 21 Local
Governments, which lies on the Eastern bank of the
River Niger, at latitude 07o02’30’’N to
07009’30’’N and longitude 06042’00’’E to
6046’30’’E. Idah is a town on the Eastern bank of
the Niger River in the middle belt region of Figure 1.0, maps showing Nigeria, Kogi State, and
Nigeria. It is a Local government in Kogi East and Idah LGA.
the head-quarters of Igala Kingdom. Idah Local
Government has an area of 36Km2 around the town
and a population record of 2006 census of 79,815.
Idah, an old river port, has commercial routes on
the river Niger linking Idah, the Kogi State capital,
to the North of the country and Onitsha in Anambra
to the South, Agenebode in Edo State across the
Niger to the West. Its population is primarily Igala.
It hosts a federal polytechnic, and a federal
government college also within the periphery of
Idah, It is a major food supplier of Kogi State and
the traditional capital of the Igala Kingdom.
The climate of Nigeria, typically varies from
equatorial in the South, tropical in the center and
arid in the North. The terrain in the Southern
lowlands merged into central hills and plateaus;
mountains in the southeast and plains in the North.
For Idah in January, the daily average maximum
temperature is 320C with the average minimum is
240C.

Figure 2.0, map of Idah LGA

AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE
STUDY

The aim of this study is create a digital map

of health care centers in Idah Metropolis,
Kogi State using Geographical Information
System technique.
However, the specific objectives of the study

Journal of Management and Technology Vol. 15, Sept. 2019 111

 Adamu, F., Danjuma, U. and Ojogbane, S., S.
are to:- Data Processing and Analysis: Database Creation,
Geo-referencing, Digitizing, Analysis (Query)
i. identify, characterize and map the
healthcare facilities in Idah Geo-referencing: This was the first step in the
processing of the image. Geo-referencing is the
ii. analyze the distribution of healthcare
process of transferring coordinates to an image so
Locations in Idah
that it assumes the same coordinate as the same
iii. determine the spatial accessibility of point on the ground. Geo-referencing of the image
healthcare facilities in Idah was done using coordinates picked from the
ground.

METHODOLOGY Digitizing: Digitizing is done to extract

information (attributes such as buildings, roads
The following procedures and methods were used etc.) from an image for further analysis.
in the course of this assignment. Digitization is the process of converting features in
scanned analogue map into digital format. A shape
file is a vector data storage format for storing the
Planning Stage
location, shape and attributes of geographic
In this phase of the research, a user features. The satellite image was digitized to
required analysis was carried out to determine the extract the road network of the study area. The on-
data that will be required for the project, The screen digitizing process was used for this process
sources of the data and how they will be acquired, using ArcGIS 10.1. Digitizing or vectorization is
the suitable method to be used and the software and done by clicking continuously (depending on the
hardware to be used, are critically observed. feature type, like point, line or polygon) on the
Data Requirements and Sources feature of interest using digitizer tool as if you are
tracing the object under consideration.
The data that were used for this project
include; satellite image of the study area, Idah Data Processing: The various data collected
acquired from Google Earth, GPS coordinates of through various means and were processed and
the features to be mapped, health care sites got further analyzed to give the desired result. The
from the ground, and attribute data of the hotels. processes carried out are as follows: Creation of
geodatabase and tourism site distribution patterns.
Primary Data: GPS Coordinates of Health Care
sites in the study area; Secondary Data: Satellite PRESENTATION OF RESULTS AND DATA
image of the study area acquired from Google ANALYSIS
Earth and road networks in the study area, digitized The importance of this project is to produce
from the satellite image. a digital map of Idah which will include the
Hardware and Software Requirements location of important features such as road
networks, and health care centre location. This
This refers to the devices and software for chapter produces spatial analyses of these features
capturing, storage, processing, analysis and display with respect to their locations and road network.
of the contents of the spatial data.
This project is to make available firsthand
Software Requirements information on the location of these special features
For the analysis and processing of the data within Idah metropolis and to create a spatial
the following were used; Google Earth Pro, ArcGIS database development of query of the dominant on
10.1, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel. the Health Care Center in Idah, in order to
recommend a preferable locational analysis and
other attribute features within the state. This is done
Journal of Management and Technology Vol. 15, Sept. 2019 112
Mapping of Health Care Facilities and Database Creation Using Remote Sensing And GIS in Idah Local Government
Area, Kogi State, Nigeria
to overlay all collected data that have been Table 1
represented in themes for further querying in
Database for Secondary Health centres
decision making.
Data availability has always been the major
limitation of project development. This limitation
resulted in the streamlining of data used for this
project. The final data used were selected based on
their ranking importance and their impact on the
objective of the study. These data include the
existing maps, name of health center, location, map
development from the Geo-referenced satellite
imagery displayed, here the following themes were
generated; Vector map showing the locations of
spatial features such as health center and road
Network.
Imagery and Digitized work
The satellite Imagery got from Google
Earth and Geo-reference is used to digitize the road
network and the locations or positions of all the
secondary Health centers found within Idah
metropolis.

Literacy Map
Figure 1 shows the literacy map of the
health care centre block. it is generated with the
help of ministry of health that provides the numbers
of private and public health center data. Different
colours are used to show the private and public
health center rate in Idah. It can be concluded from
the map that 39 health care centers are found in
Idah. It can be observed too that in most of the
health centers found in Idah, are private health
Fig 3. Google Imagery of Idah centers. It is noticed that there are more private
health centers than the public health centers in Idah.
Data Acquisition: The data acquire for query and
database were gotten from visual recognizance This map helps in locating the hotspots where there
are urgent needs to promote either public or private
during site location of the health care centre.
health care centers.
Location data was collected from the Health care
centre field Survey and other information from Health Centre Location Map: Figure 4.3 shows
health care centre in Idah. The information acquired the position of health centres that are collected
is shown in the table below: through GPS based field survey. The data collected

Journal of Management and Technology Vol. 15, Sept. 2019 113

 Adamu, F., Danjuma, U. and Ojogbane, S., S.
through GPS, is exported to point shape file, where all the Health Care centres within Idah Metropolis,
each point in the map is the location of the Health are found in Sabongari.
care centre listed in the field data. Each Health care
The significance of the result shows that
centre is labeled by its name.
there are seven Health care centres in Sabongari.
Results of database queries were presented in
form of digital maps and tables. These maps could be
thematic in nature. These presentations can be in hard
copy, soft copy and on screen.
Query to Determine Health Centres with Type
Equal to Private. Journal Management and Technology
A query to determine the health centres that
are on private ("Type") = "Private". The result in
Fig 4 shows that 17 health care centres out of 25
health care centres (68%) are Private Health Care
centre in Idah.
This significance of the result shows that
there are more private health centres in Idah than
public health centres.

Fig 6: Map showing Health care centres that are

located in Idah central.
This chapter presents the summary,
conclusion and recommendations of the study. The
summary highlights the distribution of Health Care
facilities within Idah in terms of their pattern,
availability and accessibility. The study was
concluded based on findings, and recommendations
were made for further studies as well as
contribution to knowledge.
CONCLUSION
Fig 5: Map showing Health centres that are The distribution of Health Care facilities in
Private Health centre. Nigeria has been characterized by significant
Query to Determine Health Centres District disparity. Such a disparity is shown in the ways
equal to Sabongari. some of these facilities are concentrated in one area
at the expense of others. This often resulted in the
The results in Fig 4.5.2, show that 3
spatial inequality that characterizes Nigeria’s socio-
Health centres out of 25 Health centres (12%) of
Journal of Management and Technology Vol. 15, Sept. 2019 114
Mapping of Health Care Facilities and Database Creation Using Remote Sensing And GIS in Idah Local Government
Area, Kogi State, Nigeria
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around the center of the town while other areas from asthma in 401 local authority districts in
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Khan, A. A. (1992)."An Integrated Approach to
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