AFRICAN POPULATION AND HEALTH RESEARCH CENTER

Promoting the well-being of Africans through policy-relevant research on population and health

Shelter Afrique Center, Longonot Road, Upper Hill,

P.O. Box 10787–00100 GPO, Nairobi, Kenya

Tel: (+254) 20.2720.400/1-2; Fax: (+254) 20.2720.380

For further information, contact:

Rose N. Oronje, APHRC

Mobile: (+254) 0727 935 844

Email: roronje@aphrc.org; info@aphrc.org

“Invest in Demographic Surveillance Systems to Effectively Track MDG Progress”, Scientists Urge Governments

March 2008

Health and population scientists from around the world urged governments and other development partners to use data from Demographic Surveillance Systems (DSS) to effectively monitor progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This was the main message of the 7^th Annual General and Scientific Meeting of the INDEPTH Network held September 3-7, 2007, in Nairobi Kenya. The theme of the meeting was “The Role of Demographic Surveillance Systems in Monitoring the Progress on the Millennium Development Goals.” DSS sites regularly generate data on population (births, deaths, cause of deaths, and migrations), health (illnesses and care sought), and other socio-economic indicators such as schooling and livelihoods.

The meeting was officially opened by the then Minister for Planning and National Development in Kenya, Hon Henry Obwocha, who noted that while Kenya was working very hard to achieve the MDGs, it faced a number of challenges, including scarcity of relevant data to measure progress towards meeting the goals.

In his keynote address, Dr Alex Ezeh, the Executive Director of APHRC, noted that in spite of progress being made, African countries still had a long way to go in achieving the MDGs. He said that for these countries to be able to effectively measure MDG progress, they urgently need timely access to data that are accurate, comparable, regularly updated, and disaggregated by administrative, social and economic groupings. However, data sources commonly being used in monitoring MDG progress, such as the censuses, Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys, sometimes do not meet these requirements, and are therefore less useful for timely decision making and resource allocation. “The DHS, for instance, is done every five years, and this is not frequent enough to capture rapid changes in health- and socio-economic status,” he said.

Dr Ezeh further cited the lack of vital registration data in most African countries as another key challenge and obstacle to monitoring the MDGs. “In Africa, people are born, live, and die with no records of them,” he observed. He pointed out, for instance, that only 4 out of 46 countries in the region had reported usable cause of death data from their vital registration systems to the World Health Organization by December 2003. He said that this had serious repercussions and was a big hindrance to overall development in the continent.

Citing some examples of MDGs that could be monitored using DSS data, Dr Ezeh said that DSS continuously generate accurate data that capture health and population indicators at individual, household and community levels. Some of the examples cited included:

· MDG 1 – DSS can provide data on nutritional status, percentage of extreme poverty and poverty dynamics;

· MDG 2 – DSS can provide data on education attainment, completion, equity and quality;

· MDG 4 – DSS can provide data on under five mortality, child vaccination and cause of death;

· MDG 5 – DSS can provide data on maternal mortality, cause of death, and supervised deliveries;

· MDG 6 – DSS can provide data on morbidity due to malaria, HIV/AIDS and TB;

· MDG 7 – DSS can provide data on improving lives of slum dwellers.

He reiterated the importance of vital registration data, which can be easily captured by demographic surveillance systems, saying that “If we believe everyone counts, then we’ll make every effort to count everyone.” This, he said, would lead to better information, which in turn would mean better decisions and, hence, better health. “Therefore,” Dr Ezeh concluded, “I would like to urge governments as well as other players to invest in existing and new DSS sites.”

INDEPTH NETWORK:

INDEPTH is an international network of field sites with continuous demographic evaluation of populations and their health in developing countries. INDEPTH has 38 demographic surveillance sites in 19 different countries. Of these, 26 sites are found in Africa, 10 in Asia, 1 in Oceania and 1 in Central America. Collectively, these sites monitor over 2,000,000 people at household level and provide health and demographic data to enable their countries set health priorities and policies based on longitudinal evidence. More than 120 scientists from the DSS sites attended the Annual General Meeting.