Data on clinic visits were collected from March 1 through May 31, 2020, which corresponds to the dry season and low malaria transmission season in the study area, and the period in between the annual harvest and the annual planting season. All communities in Nouna District and all primary healthcare facilities were eligible for inclusion in the study. The area is primarily rural and agrarian. This study took place in Nouna district in northwestern Burkina Faso.
We hypothesized that antibiotic prescription rates would be higher in communities closer to healthcare facilities, which could have implications for antimicrobial resistance selection. We additionally evaluated whether increasing distance was correlated with antibiotic prescription practices because antibiotic prescribing may be more dependent on clinician prescribing practices rather than healthcare seeking behaviors. We hypothesized community-level healthcare utilization would be decreased for communities with increased distance to the healthcare facility. We assessed the relationship between primary healthcare utilization among children under 5 years of age (defined as the number of clinic visits per population) and distance to the primary healthcare facility to assess whether physical distance from a facility reduces healthcare-seeking behavior in rural Burkina Faso. Children with reduced access to primary care may be at increased vulnerability to adverse health outcomes including mortality and thus may be a priority population for targeting interventions for mitigating child mortality and morbidity. However, substantial barriers to care likely remain.
GEODIST IN STATA FREE
Prior to introduction of free care, user fees for healthcare services had been described as a barrier to accessing care. In Burkina Faso, healthcare for children under 5 years of age has been provided by the Ministry of Health free of charge since 2016.
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