Abstract
Global health status has improved over years, yet non-infectious and lifestyle diseases are burgeoning speedily and the danger of transmittable diseases remains incessant. The risks are higher for developing countries due to their limited resources. Primary Health Centers (PHCs) can bring affordable health care to the under-served and unserved. In countries like India, governments have a limited budget for PHCs, and thus, finding the optimal location of PHCs is a difficult yet crucial decision problem. Many theoretical and application-oriented location models have been proposed in the Management Science literature. This article contains simple and useful extensions of the generic maximal coverage location model to address some of the challenges faced by developing nations in delivering universal basic health care. The article also presents numerical illustrations of the models along with a case study. Implementation of the proposed models in northeast Delhi, India, reveals that existing locations for Mohalla clinics are not appropriate for the target populations considered in this case study. Neither they can attract the majority of the households nor the load for primary care on large hospitals is coming down significantly. In northeast Delhi, more sites need to be identified for the PHCs.
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Data Availability
The datasets used for this study were derived from the public domain resources given as follows: https://delhishelterboard.in/main/; http://health.delhigovt.nic.in/wps/wcm/connect/doit_health/Health/Home/Directorate+General+of+Health+Services/Aam+Aadmi+Mohalla+Clinics/.
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The author would like to thank Prof. Amit Kumar Bardhan and Dr. Arun Kumar Sharma for their valuable inputs and suggestions.
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Kumar, K. Location Analysis of Primary Health Care Centers: A Case Study of Mohalla Clinics in Delhi. Oper. Res. Forum 4, 33 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43069-023-00204-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43069-023-00204-9