DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70004#0146
144
(Lusaka Province), where there is a ratio of far less than 200 persons per bed.
However, the picture changes considerably if one takes the number of doctors
rather than the number of hospital beds as an index of medical care provision
representing the qualitative aspect. For the country as a whole in 1978 there
was one doctor to every 8,490 persons, yet provincially this ratio varied from
one doctor to over 30,000 persons (Luapula and Northern) to 1 : 5,260 (Cop-
perbelt) and 1 : 2,510 (Lusaka). There is clearly a great spatial inequity in the
distribution of doctors, with three quarters of the country’s doctors located in
Lusaka and Copperbelt Provinces, where they care for only a third of the pop-
ulation. The dissimilarity index, which is 10.3 for the distribution of beds, is
very high — 40.4 — for the distribution of doctors. Although attempts can be
made to justify the concentration of doctors in Lusaka and the Copperbelt on
the grounds that they are the location of major hospitals to which complicated
cases are transferred, detailed investigation does not support this argument.
Thus at the huge University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka (1,000 beds), which
Fig. 40: Hospitals in Zambia 1981 and their sponsoring bodies
Source: Compiled by author based on information from the Ministry of
Health and the Churches Medical Association of Zambia, both Lusaka
(Lusaka Province), where there is a ratio of far less than 200 persons per bed.
However, the picture changes considerably if one takes the number of doctors
rather than the number of hospital beds as an index of medical care provision
representing the qualitative aspect. For the country as a whole in 1978 there
was one doctor to every 8,490 persons, yet provincially this ratio varied from
one doctor to over 30,000 persons (Luapula and Northern) to 1 : 5,260 (Cop-
perbelt) and 1 : 2,510 (Lusaka). There is clearly a great spatial inequity in the
distribution of doctors, with three quarters of the country’s doctors located in
Lusaka and Copperbelt Provinces, where they care for only a third of the pop-
ulation. The dissimilarity index, which is 10.3 for the distribution of beds, is
very high — 40.4 — for the distribution of doctors. Although attempts can be
made to justify the concentration of doctors in Lusaka and the Copperbelt on
the grounds that they are the location of major hospitals to which complicated
cases are transferred, detailed investigation does not support this argument.
Thus at the huge University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka (1,000 beds), which
Fig. 40: Hospitals in Zambia 1981 and their sponsoring bodies
Source: Compiled by author based on information from the Ministry of
Health and the Churches Medical Association of Zambia, both Lusaka