Abstract
Spatial health issues have become a major item in health discussions; it determines the level of accessibility and by extension its effects on cost/income, wellbeing among others all of which are determinants of overall development of any society. Generally, there is uneven distribution of health facilities, with its attendant problems globally. One of the methods of determining the pattern of the distribution is Geographic Information System (GIS). It is also an alternative tool for evaluating policies affecting health outcomes, explaining disease patterns of relationships with social, institutional, technological and natural environment. It is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data. The present analysed the spatial pattern of public secondary hospitals, with Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria as a case study. The study sampled nine (9) purposively selected public secondary health institutions from Abuja Municipal Area Council. Purposive sampling technique was adopted in collecting the relevant data; while GIS ArcGIS software was used to capture satellite map of the study area and Nearest Neighbour Analysis (NNA) was used to analyze the spatial pattern of the public secondary hospitals. The result shows that Rn=0.66, therefore spatial pattern of public secondary hospitals in AMAC is random; thus, it is useful in health forecasting and enhancing health services provision. The study therefore recommends that GIS is an alternative tool in spatial analysis of health facilities, and by extension useful in determining accessibility to public secondary health facilities, upon which health policies can be evolved.
Key Words: GIS, Health facilities, Public Health Facilities, Public Secondary hospital
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