Health-care availability, preference, and distance for women in urban Bo, Sierra Leone

To examine the diversity of the health-care providers in urban Bo, Sierra Leone, identify the types of health-care facilities preferred by women for fevers, and analyze the road network distances from homes to preferred health-care providers.

A population-based random sampling method was used to recruit 2419 women from Bo. A geographic information system was used to measure the road distance from each woman's home to her preferred provider.

Preferred health-care providers for acute febrile illnesses (commonly referred to as "malaria" in the study communities) were hospitals (62.3 %), clinics (12.6 %), and pharmacies (12.4 %). Participants lived a median distance of 0.6 km from the nearest provider, but on average each woman lived 2.2 km one-way from her preferred provider. Women living farther from the city center had preferred providers significantly farther from home than women living downtown.

The diverse health-care marketplace in Bo allows women to select clinical facilities from across the city. Most women prefer a malaria care provider farther from home than they could comfortably walk when ill.