Geographical Information Systems in Selection of States to Participate in a Long-term Transformative Programme to Build Leadership and Accountability in Nigeria’s Health Sector
Global Health Metrics & Evaluation: Controversies, Innovation, Accountability, 14–16 March 2011
Anddy Omoluabi, Osondu Ogbuoji, and Chioma Ogbozor
“Background: With competing interests and priorities by funding agencies and the need for quick wins, the selection of project states continues to be subjective in Nigeria. To address this issue, Management Sciences for Health (MSH) recently applied a geographical information system (GIS) to objectively and transparently select states for the implementation of a long-term transformative programme to build leadership and accountability in Nigeria’s health sector. The aim of our study was to provide an objective and transparent basis for the selection of two of 36 possible states and the Federal Capital Territory, and to communicate the outcome to relevant stakeholders.
“Methods: Relevant stakeholders including the project funder were consulted and agreed to demographic parameters including: high State HIV/AIDS prevalence, minimum presence of other donor-funded HIV/AIDS programmes, reasonable security alert levels, accessibility to other MSH offices, and presence of graduates of the MSH Fellowship Programme. With secondary demographic data, a one-to-many relationship was established between these attribute data and a state-level shapefile with the use of Manifold professional edition build 8.0.16. A layer of the state-level map was created for each parameter, and a series of select queries with agreed upon values were ran on the appropriate fields in the attribute data. The resultant maps were layered onto one and varying transparency levels were set to allow for visualisation across all the layers.
“Findings: The rationale, transparency, graphical results, and objectivity of the process facilitated the acceptance of and buy-in to the choice of the Federal Capital Territory and Gombe States by the donor agency and other stakeholders.
“Interpretation: GIS as a decision support system can help to objectively select states by managing and analysing multiple selection parameters and promote buy-in by relevant stakeholders.”
