AUTHOR=Mohammed Ramesh Nassery , Khawari Abdullah , Shaguy Jerome Aondona , Abouzied Alaa 

TITLE=A GIS-based approach to identifying communities underserved by primary health care services—An Afghanistan case study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 11 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1209986

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2023.1209986

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=Afghanistan has been in an active state of conflict and war for twenty continuous years. Social services like health and education have been badly affected through service disruption, brain drain and generalized instability. Health indices that provide proxy indicators for general population wellness, such as maternal health, child mortality and immunization coverage show that the health services available to the Afghan population are sub-optimal.Investment in social service and interventions has increased. The World Bank, and the United Nations through its agencies (World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations' Children's Fund (UNICEF), is providing social support through targeted and strategic programs. However, the topographic and environmental realities of Afghanistan, with broad mountain coverage, natural disasters and latent conflict has made data and information gathering arduous. Since data forms the essential building block for measurement and by extension management, the WHO health emergencies (WHE) information management unit at WHO Afghanistan has delivered an innovative data analysis, specialized and targeted at providing improved information on communities that are not adequately covered by health services.Deploying a geographical information system (GIS) approach, the WHE team has collated primary and secondary data from a combination of datasets to produce a far