As such, people facing long travel times to healthcare facilities are less likely to seek care when it is needed 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and the consequences of failing to seek care include increased mortality and morbidity from treatable conditions 10, 11.Įffectively characterizing travel time can assist in identifying communities that would most benefit from additional healthcare resources. This situation can be exacerbated by poor transportation infrastructure and lack of motorized transport, which further increase the time required for travel and could disproportionally affect lower-income populations. Due to spatial clustering of healthcare facilities in densely populated areas, individuals living in rural regions often face increased travel times and thus cost when seeking healthcare. Our maps highlight an additional vulnerability faced by poorer individuals in remote areas and can help to estimate whether individuals will seek healthcare when it is needed, as well as providing an evidence base for efficiently distributing limited healthcare and transportation resources to underserved populations both now and in the future.Īccess to healthcare is a measure of human well-being that is constrained by numerous geographically varying factors 1, 2, 3, the most immediate of which is the time it takes individuals to travel to a properly equipped and adequately staffed healthcare facility. We find that just 8.9% of the global population (646 million people) cannot reach healthcare within one hour if they have access to motorized transport, and that 43.3% (3.16 billion people) cannot reach a healthcare facility by foot within one hour. We produce maps of travel time with and without access to motorized transport, thus characterizing travel time to healthcare for populations distributed across the wealth spectrum. Leveraging the geographically variable strengths of our facility datasets, we use an established methodology 4 to characterize travel time to healthcare facilities in unprecedented detail. We harness major data collection efforts underway by OpenStreetMap, Google Maps and academic researchers to compile the most complete collection of facility locations to date. Quantifying access to care globally is challenging due to the absence of a comprehensive database of healthcare facilities. Access to healthcare is a requirement for human well-being that is constrained, in part, by the allocation of healthcare resources relative to the geographically dispersed human population 1, 2, 3.
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