Assessing health inequalities in Iran: a focus on the distribution of health care facilities.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Equality in distribution of health care facilities is the main cause for access and enjoyment to the health. The aim of this study was to examine the regional disparities in health care facilities across the Markazi province. METHODS This was a cross-sectional study. Study sample included the cities of Markazi province, ranked based on 15 health indices. Data was collected by a data collection form made by the researcher using statistical yearbook. The indices were weighted using Shannon entropy. Finally, technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) was used to rank the towns of the province in terms of access to health care facilities. RESULTS There is a large gap between cities of Markazi province in terms of access to health care facilities. Shannon entropy introduced the number of urban health centers per 1000 people as the most important indicator and the number of rural active health house per 1000 people as the less important indicator. According to TOPSIS, the towns of Ashtian and Shazand ranked the first and last (10th) respectively in access to health services. CONCLUSION There are significant inequalities in distribution of health care facilities in Markazi province. We propose that policy makers determine resource allocation priorities according to the degree of development for a balanced and equal distribution of health care facilities.