Out~ Patient care gradients for a rural Zambian Hospital

Abstract

Maurice King (Medical Care in Developing Countries, 1966), has shown that Out-Patient Care Gradients, i.e., the relationship between distance travelled by patients to attend clinic, is exponential for hospitals in developing countries. The purpose of this survey was to discover whether this was true in a country in which development was progressing rapidly. Almost all surveys done previously have been some years ago in areas where communications were poor and modern luxuries such as buses were unheard of. As such, they bear little relevance to our understanding of community needs in present day Africa, where modern technology is changing all but the most remote areas.