Abstract
Background: Health equity has persistently been a global concern. As a basic material guarantee to ensure health equity, how to allocate the health resources in a fair and reasonable way has always been one of the research hotspots. The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has also prompted a rethinking of the topic. Based on the previous research, western China is a relatively backward region, coupled with climate, geography, and other factors, which leading the inconvenient transportation and difficult resource allocation. However, the fairness of health resource allocation in western China has received relatively little attention. Methods: Lorentz curve, Gini coefficient and Theil index were used to analyse the health resources allocation in the western China. The indexes include number of beds, medical (assistant) practitioners, registered nurses from 2014 to 2018 through population and geography dimensions. Results: The total health resources shows an increasing trend from 2014 to 2018; The Lorentz curve in the population dimension had a smaller curvature than in the geography dimension. The Gini coefficients for health resources in the population dimension were ranged from 0.057 to 0.129, and in geography dimension the Gini coefficients ranged between 0.605 and 0.647. This shows that the distribution of Health resources is fair basing on population dimension. Furthermore, in two dimensions, the intra-group contribution rate of the Theil index was higher than in the inter-group, and the allocation of practicing (assistant) practitioners and registered nurses show a significant inequity in intra-group. This result indicated that the inequity of health resources allocation were mainly came from intra-group, namely the provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) in western China.Conclusions: In recent years, China’s various measures have improved the total amount of health resources and its equity of health resources in western China. However, the fairness of the health resources allocation in western China were remind poor. Although the fairness of human resources allocation has been alleviated in population dimension, the inequity of human resources distribution in provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) are still obvious. In addition, the accessibility of health resources in western China must be further improved.