The spatial distribution of health resources within countries and communities: examples from India and Zambia

"Between one country and another, one province and another and even one locality and another there will always exist a certain inequality in the conditions of life, which it will be possible to reduce to a minimum but never entirely remove", Friedrich Engels, 1875, Quoted from D. M. Smith's Where the Grass is Greener; Geographical Perspectives on Inequality. London, 1979. And it is true that there are wide disparities in the availability of welfare facilities including health at international, national, regional and inter-regional levels. At the same time such disparities are increasing over time. In terms of spatial distribution, not only the developing world but even developed countries such as the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom, face problems resulting from wide imbalances in the provision of welfare facilities. In this paper, an attempt has been made to study inequalities in the distribution of health facilities in India and Zambia.