Number of functional health centres/50 000 population

Proxy indicator of geographical accessibility, and of equity in availability of Health Facilties across different administrative units

Numerator

The number of basic health units, i.e. all public and private health facilities, defined as a static facility (a designated building) or mobile clinics in which general health services are offered, in a defined administrative or health area, at a given point in time

Denominator

The total population for the same administrative or health area, at the same point in time

Disaggregation

Administrative area; health area; public/private; fixed/mobile; support/no support from humanitarian organisations;

Indicator used for response monitoring ?

Yes

Types

Baseline

Output

Threshold / Standard

1 Health Centre per 50 000 population Follow-up of trends

General guidance

Calculation: This indicator can be adjusted to measure the support provided by one or several humanitarian organisations beside the MoH: number of health centres supported by humanitarian organisation/50 000 population. Interpretation: This indicator is a snapshot of the situation at a given point in time. At the pre-crisis phase, this indicator indicates the baseline availability of functional health facilities. In the early phase after a crisis occurs, this indicator will show the consequences of the crisis (decrease/reduction in availability of health facilities) when compared to pre-crisis and the needs in terms of support to health facilities. At later stages of crisis, trends in this indicator will allow to monitor the response in supporting health facilities. Limitation: this indicator measures the availability of health facilities but does not measure access to the facilities by the population nor the quality of service provided. It is therefore only a proxy for coverage.

Guidance on phases

There is a differing level of quality of data which can be collected at different phases of the emergency depending on the context, eg the data available and the systems for data collection in place before the crisis, the accessibility of the affected areas, the resources on the ground, etc...

Phase applicability

Pre-crisis/Baseline

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Phase 4

Guidance for pre-crisis/baseline

Census of health facilities, administrative boundaries, health areas boundaries, population per administrative areas,and population per health areas should be available for crisis-prone countries, possibly as part of the COD/FOD, as a prepardness instrument; the indicator itself could be available pre-crisis.

Data Sources

Numerator: census of health facilities; assessment of functionality of health facilities; 3 Ws Denominator: administrative boundaries; health areas boundaries; population per administrative area; population per health area;

Comments

Further guidance: Monitoring the building blocks of the health system (http://www.who.int/healthinfo/systems/monitoring/en/index.html)