Application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for analysing and Planning of Reproductive Health Services in Pattani Province Sirichai Leewannapasai, M.D. (Provincial Public Health Office, Pattani Province) Sripen Durongdej, Ph.D. (Department of Geography, Kasetsart University) Email : fsocspd@ku.ac.th Akom Sowana, Ph.D. Candidate (Asian Institute of Technology) 1 Introduction The Pattani Provincial Public Health Office (PPHO) received financial support from the United Nations Population Fund AID (UNPFA) to launch a pilot project on application of Geographic Information System (GIS) for analyzing and planning of Reproductive Health (RH) services in 2001. The project had both short-and long-term objectives. The short-term objective was to introduce a GIS technology in RH application in analyzing and seeking clusters of houses of pregnant women who use TBAs services for delivery. The long-term objective was to apply the GIS technology and the experience gained during the implementation of the system prototype development phase for developing the health plans in RH and other health concerns such as STD/HIV/AIDS protection, family planning, adolescent reproductive health, health education and epidemiology for common and rare disease control. More importantly, the project aimed to build up the capacity of the Information Technology and related GIS technologies to health personnel of Pattani PPHO so that they can further develop and apply the GIS knowledge in other public health areas after completion of the pilot project. It was expected that the model used in the pilot project would be applied in the extension of the project to cover public health services in Pattani over a broader area. For launching the pilot project, four villages of Napradu Sub-district in Khok Pho District, Pattani Province, southern region of Thailand, were selected as the study area. These included Ban Thung Han, Ban Talad Na Pradu, Ban Huai Pai and Ban Napradu villages as shown in Image 1.  Image 1: Napradu Sub-district, the Study Area
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