Health database expands
Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies acknowledged for global scientific and health data archives.
THE Somkhele-based Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies has been acknowledged for its valuable contribution to global scientific and health data archives.
The international Network for the Demographic Evaluation of Population and Their Health (INDEPTH Network) last week released important updates on two online data archives that continue to build and strengthen capacity for research data management and sharing.
These improve free access to health and science research in low- and middle-income countries to individuals working in the public health space globally.
The INDEPTH Data Repository is an online archive of high-quality datasets from member centres in various countries.
It was established exactly one year ago with six datasets, and last week this was increased by a further seven, making a total of 13 HDSSs on the repository.
INDEPTHStats is a website, freely available to the general public, containing summary statistics, images and graphs of key health and demographic indicators generated from member HDSS centres.
It provides researchers, government officials and policymakers with information that can guide their decision-making, including crude birth and death rates, age specific fertility and death rates, infant, child, and under five mortality rates, as well as numerous other health and demographic indicators.
Additional indicators, such as death rates by cause of death, will be added in the near future.
Promise kept
The data is subjected to rigorous technical checks, first at the individual HDSSs and then within INDEPTH led by the secretariat team in Accra.
At the launch on 1 July 2013 INDEPTHStats had data from 18 HDSS and with nine new countries added, now boasts a total of 27 HDSSs in 14 countries.
‘I am extremely delighted that we promised last year that we would provide new data and additional datasets today, a year later, and we have fulfilled that promise,’ says Professor Osman Sankoh Executive Director, INDEPTH Network.
‘On behalf of the board, I congratulate Dr Kobus Herbst and his indefatigable teams in Africa and Asia of the INDEPTH Data Management Programme for working very hard to making these updates possible.’
The availability of these data has been made possible by various previous and current funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, IDRC, NIA/WHO, Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Sida/Research Cooperation Unit, Wellcome Trust and William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, combined with the generous, free provision of the data by the member HDSSs as well as their various centre-specific funders.
