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. 2019 Apr 2;12(1):196.
doi: 10.1186/s13104-019-4224-1.

Protocol for geolocating rural villages of women in Liberia utilizing a maternity waiting home

K H James  1 , J E Perosky  2 , K McLean  2 , A Nyanplu  3 , C A Moyer  4 , J R Lori  2
Affiliations

Protocol for geolocating rural villages of women in Liberia utilizing a maternity waiting home

K H James et al. BMC Res Notes. .

Abstract

Objective: Geospatial data are used by health systems and researchers to understand disease burdens, trace outbreaks, and allocate resources, however, there are few well-documented protocols for collecting and analyzing geographic information systems data in rural areas of low- and middle-income countries. Even with the proliferation of spatial technologies such as Open Street Map and Google Maps, basic geographic data-such as village locations-are not widely available in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this paper is to report a step-wise protocol, using geographic information system techniques and tools, developed to collect and analyze the type of spatial data necessary to calculate the distance between rural villages and maternity waiting homes located near rural primary healthcare facilities in Bong County, Liberia.

Results: Using a step-wise approach incorporating local healthcare provider knowledge, intensive field work, and spatial technologies such as Open Street Map and Google Maps for village geospatial data collection and verification, we identified village locations of 93.7% of the women who accessed the five maternity waiting homes in our study from 2012 to 2016.

Keywords: Geographic information system; Liberia; Maternity waiting homes.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Map resources were used to collect and verify additional GPS points. Identified GPS coordinates were cross-referenced using Open Street Map, Google Maps, and hand-drawn health facility maps. The relative location of ‘Gorngor-Ta’ and ‘Dorkpolorsue’ are displayed as they appear in each resource. All map resources were used with permission
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Process for identifying the location of villages
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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