Status of birth and pregnancy outcome capture in Health Demographic Surveillance Sites in 13 countries

Abstract

Objectives We compared pregnancy identification methods and outcome capture across 31 Health Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) sites in 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Methods From 2009 to 2014, details on the sites and surveillance systems including frequency of update rounds, characteristics of enumerators and interviewers, acceptable respondents were collected and compared across sites. Results The 31 HDSS had a combined population of over 2,905,602 with 165,820 births for the period. Stillbirth rate ranged from 1.9 to 42.6 deaths per 1000 total births and the neonatal mortality rate from 2.6 to 41.6 per 1000 live births. Three quarters (75.3%) of recorded neonatal deaths occurred in the first week of life. The proportion of infant deaths that occurred in the neonatal period ranged from 8 to 83%, with a median of 53%. Sites that registered pregnancies upon locating a live baby in the routine household surveillance round had lower recorded mortality rates. Conclusions Increased attention and standardization of pregnancy surveillance and the time of birth will improve data collection and provide platforms for evaluations and availability of data for decision-making with implications for national planning. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s00038-019-01241-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Neonatal and child mortality data in retrospective population-based surveys compared with prospective demographic surveillance: EN-INDEPTH study

“…The HDSS estimates were substantially higher in Matlab (57%), which had intensive surveillance with bimonthly visits and pregnancy testing after missed periods [ 23 ] and in Bandim (63%) (Additional file 3 .1), where mortality estimates are based on prospective surveillance (Additional file 2 .1). Thus some HDSSs also likely underestimate early mortality, especially when intervals between follow-up rounds are long: deaths in children under surveillance are captured, but early deaths among children born between rounds are likely to be missed [ 24 ].…”

The Global Network Maternal Newborn Health Registry: a multi-country, community-based registry of pregnancy outcomes

“…One of the strengths of the MNHR is the population-based nature of the MNHR, which reduces potential bias present in facility-based pregnancy registries. Additionally, because it is a prospective study, it reduces some of the recall bias associated with periodic surveys [ 2 , 30 ]. Additionally, the MNHR uses standardized definitions and methods across disparate sites that allows for comparisons.…”

Maternal and neonatal data collection systems in low- and middle-income countries for maternal vaccines active safety surveillance systems: A scoping review

“…We were able to access the operating manuals, data forms, and documentation for six out of the eight systems [16,102,130,151,162,169]; for SmartCare and PER/BDS these types of documents were not identi ed. Although most of the systems were designed for clinical care, some had been conceptualized for research such as GN-MNHR) [105,112,118,121,122] or surveillance such as INDEPTH [45,48,76,99] or PER/BDS [173]. Some of these were designed to satisfy more than one objective, and in the case of OpenMRS, this varied in different locations where the system is in place [129,144,151,160,169,177].…”

“…Data were captured only at facilities in the system SIP [160], SmartCare [177] and PER/BDS [173,181]. Data were captured both at the facility and community level for the systems DHIS 2 [143,147], INDEPTH [48,99], OpenMRS [151][152][153] and OpenSRP [169]. GD-MNHR only captured data at the community level [107,112].…”