Accessibility to Health Services in Mexico

The Department of Informatics and Medical Geography of the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico has developed a GIS that allows coverage-level analysis of primary health services for the Health Ministry. Primary health care services must be available to the population without social security in 30 minutes or less by public transportation.

Isochrones were calculated for displacement for each primary health medical unit of the Health Ministry along the national road network. Standardized parameters were set for group time of travel and determined by the kinds of roads and their features. Buffers of three and five kilometers were constructed from the isochrones to delimit the covered zones. ArcGIS 9 was a powerful tool for identifying areas outside the buffer boundaries.