ArticleBMC global and public health2026
Inter-facility travel time and referral for emergency obstetric care in the 15 most populated cities of Nigeria: a spatial analysis.
Article in BMC global and public health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundTimely access to comprehensive emergency obstetric care (CEmOC) can be vital for ensuring maternal and newborn survival. However, pregnant women in need of CEmOC may not initially present at a CEmOC facility, thereby necessitating inter-facility referral. We assessed inter-facility travel time between potential referring non-CEmOC facilities and receiving CEmOC facilities in the 15 largest Nigerian cities.
methodsData was sourced from the 2018 Nigeria Health Facility Registry, with additional facilities verified in 2022. We applied Google Maps Platform's internal Directions Application Programming Interface (API) to derive driving times from each 600m
resultsAltogether, 4,563 and 1,963 non-CEmOC and CEmOC facilities were included, respectively. Percentage of non-CEmOC facilities located > 30 min to the nearest public CEmOC was highest in Port Harcourt (51%) and lowest in Maiduguri (6%). All non-CEmOC facilities were located ≤ 60 min from the nearest public CEmOC facility in Aba, Owerri, and Ilorin. Median number of non-CEmOC facilities connected to a public CEmOC facility was 27, with five public CEmOC facilities connected to > 100 non-CEmOC facilities. For some non-CEmOC facilities, the nearest public CEmOC facilities are in a contiguous city or state.
conclusionsInter-facility referrals in large Nigerian cities show substantial variation in travel time and uneven referral loads, revealing critical pressure points that may delay timely access to CEmOC. Integrating travel time metrics into maternal health planning is essential for improving the efficiency, equity, and resilience of resource-constrained urban referral systems.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.