When data is used to assess health access

In April, OpenCity.in, a civic tech platform for urban data, conducted a ‘datajam’ to understand how Bengaluru’s Assembly Constituencies fared on various development parameters. To assess the health vulnerability of the constituencies, it looked at Primary Health Centres (PHC), Namma Clinics, Anganwadis, BBMP health centres and maternity hospitals.

In terms of primary health centre (PHC) coverage, 11 constituencies had a coverage of 30,000 people per PHC. Of this, Chickpet ranked best with each PHC serving a population of 17,755.

Bommanahalli, Gandhi Nagar, Yeshwantpur, Vijaynagar, Sarvagnanagar, Jayanagar, Bangalore South and K.R. Pura were some of the top-ranked assembly constituencies.

The presence of health centres in the form of PHCs seems good in some of the constituencies but poor in others. At the city level, it seems better than the 50,000 people one PHC is expected to support, but the coverage is not uniform.

However, there are not enough Anganwadis. The exercise also revealed problems in the availability of quality data. A major constraint was the lack of current population and demographic data, given the last census was done more than 13 years ago. The participants had to use voter data as a proxy. Current population density at the ward and block level can help get a better idea, but with such data lacking, it was not clear how many people a PHC or Namma Clinic served

There is no audited information on the functionality of PHCs — do doctors and nurses show up? what are the facilities available and working? Having a PHC at an accessible distance might not mean much if the PHC is understaffed or does not have facilities.

More data in terms of area-wise population density, the spread of PHCs within the constituency etc can help understand gaps better and can help planners target better. Opencity team plans to build on this exercise by adding other infrastructure that affects the health of a population to the analysis- the presence of open drains, STPs, green cover, good street network to access healthcare and elevation mapping to understand flooding.

(Inputs from Meera K, cofounder OpenCity.in and Vaidya R, Research Associate, Centre for Public Policy, IIMB who was a part of the data jam)