Research Summary: Global maps of travel time to emergency and tertiary hospitals

Recent research has mapped global travel times to different tiers of hospitals, revealing significant disparities in access to emergency and tertiary care. While a high percentage of the world's population is within an hour's drive of a general hospital, this accessibility drops sharply for facilities with emergency departments or tertiary capabilities. Over 1.4 billion people lack access to emergency hospitals within an hour, predominantly in South and East Asia and Nigeria, while 312 million are more than an hour away from any hospital, primarily in regions spanning the Sahel to Madagascar.

Why it matters

These findings are crucial for understanding the operational reach of healthcare systems globally and identifying critical gaps in emergency and specialized medical care. This spatial data provides a quantitative basis for strategic planning, resource allocation, and targeted interventions aimed at improving health equity and reducing mortality rates associated with delayed access to appropriate medical facilities.

Key insights

• 96.2% of the global population resides within a one-hour drive of a general hospital.
• Accessibility to hospitals with documented emergency departments drops to 78.5% within an hour's drive.
• Only 40.3% of the population is within an hour's drive of a tertiary care facility (defined by helipad or university affiliation).
• Approximately 1.45 billion people have access to a general hospital but not an emergency hospital within an hour, mainly concentrated in South and East Asia and Nigeria.
• A significant 312 million people live over an hour away from any hospital, primarily in a belt stretching from the Sahel to Madagascar.
• The methodology involved routing drive times on the OpenStreetMap network using 217,841 hospital locations and weighting with GHS-POP 2025 data.

Source

arXiv — Computers and Society — https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12696