An assessment of healthcare system accessibility of local communities in Yen Chau District, Son La Province

Abstract

Son La Hydroelectric Project has designed the plant with the capacity of 2400 MW. It will provide electricity for not only the northwest region but also for the other regions of Vietnam. The project was approved by the Vietnam National Assembly on December 16th, 2002, in detail: Son La Hydroelectric Plant will be constructed mainly in Son La and Lai Chau provinces. It has water reservoir of 16 billion m3. Therefore, there are 13,656 households that have to resettle in new places. Healthcare facility is one of the very important public services for local communities, especially in the case of mountainous district as Yen Chau, Son La Province. Based on the AccessMod extension of ArcView software, we evaluated the mobility of local people as well as the capacities of healthcare system in the study area. The results of the study are showing that: there is only 77% of total population who can access the healthcare system in Yen Chau District. It means that the quality as well as the capacity of healthcare system did not meet the requirement of local people. On the other hand, accessibility is very useful method for assessing the quality of infrastructure system in rural area. It provided the important information of the real condition of public service system for local planners and managers.