Risk groups and risk areas
Fassin, D.; Jeannée, E.
World Health Forum 10(3-4): 448-451
1989
ISSN/ISBN: 0251-2432 PMID: 2637732 Document Number: 368689
Access to care, or the effectiveness with which the health system is used, should be considered when we speak of inequalities in health. The risk concept can be understood in 2 ways, depending on whether the analysis is focused on the population or on the area. They are different presentation of the same data; in tabular form and the other in the form of maps. A study was done in Pikine, a suburban area of Dakar, Senegal. This area has a population of 600,000, half of whom are legally housed, the other half of whom bought their land illegally. The population consists mostly of the poorer classes. 26 public health care (PHC) system. 6 doctors' surgeries and 10 pharmacies make up the private health care system. The sample consists of 500 mothers with at least 1 child under 5 years of age. The women were asked about their use of services. The illegally occupied areas almost exactly coincide with the high-risk areas. The most prosperous areas have high immunization coverage, the poor areas, lesser coverage. The spatial risk distribution is essentially the expression of its social distribution. There are groups at risk--women who have not been to school, and women whose husbands are unemployed. The women at risk are the poorest and those least used to urban life. There are risk areas-- the proportion of unimmunized children is the highest. Decision makers do not use the 2 risk approaches the same way. The knowledge of certain risk areas could influence public health decisions. Decision making is not a science.