Two organisations collaborate - To collect health data

Daily Graphic Pg. 44. Mon. June 08/09

Story: Rebecca Quaicoe Duho

A US-based research institute is to collaborate with INDEPTH Network, an international non-governmental organisation based in Ghana, to help in the collection and analysis of health data to inform policies both locally and internationally.
Based in Seattle Washington, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) makes available to the world information on population health, its determinants, and the performance of health systems and seeks to achieve this directly, by catalysing the work of others, and training researchers and policy makers.
Through the collaboration, scientists from INDEPTH will be trained at the IHME to help in the building and strengthening of their capacities while the network will also make available its sites to the institute for IHME to collect and analyse data that have been generated over the years.
The INDEPTH Network, which deals in the demographic evaluation of populations and their health in developing countries, has its secretariat in Ghana and is based in 18 other countries across the globe and currently has 33 demographic surveillance systems (DSS) field sites that collectively monitor 2.2 million people at the household level.
When the collaboration is achieved, it will also help improve the methodologies used by INDEPTH in its data collection and also help the network to attract donors for its various research works.
To this end, the Director of the IHME, Dr Christopher Murray, together with a professor at the Department of Global Health at the institute, Dr Rafael Lozano, paid a two-day working visit to the INDEPTH Secretariat in Accra where they were taken to the Dodowa Health Research Centre (DHRC) in the Dangbe West District in the Greater Accra Region to observe at first-hand the difficulties that field officers go through in their day-to-day collection of health data.
The DHRC — which operates its demographic and health surveillance in Ayikuma, Dodowa, Prampram, Asutsuare and Dawa — operates in all seven local councils of the district, which has a DSS population of 106,470 with an infant population of four per cent.
The Director of the centre, Dr Margaret Gyapong, who briefed Dr Murray and his colleague on some of the work that the centre undertakes, said they collected data from the whole community over a period of time to monitor new health threats, track population changes and assess policy interventions.
She said currently the centre, which collaborates with INDEPTH, was collecting data on the impact of the use of Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) in the management of malaria and was looking forward to undertaking other research interventions.
The team also visited Duffor Osudoku near Asutsuare where the DSS Field Worker, Nii Adjatey Adjei, briefed them, saying that he collects data on in and out migration, new births, pregnancies, death, the socio-economic status of the people, as well as verbal autopsy in the community.
Dr Murray, who was impressed with the level of work being done, said the site had a huge resource base that could be used to the benefit of many people.
He said the goal of the IHME was to help inform data globally and that it was normally difficult to get access to data from some of the regions of the world, adding that collaborating with INDEPTH would help bridge that gap.
The Executive Director of INDEPTH, Dr Osman Sankoh, at the end of the two-day visit, said when the collaboration was signed it would help INDEPTH to open up its network to help it undertake other initiatives.
He said the network was willing to share its findings with the international community but added that its capacity needed to be built through collaboration.
Dr Sankoh said such collaborations would help the outside community to understand the enormity of work and challenges that they went through, saying that such knowledge would help strike a strategic partnership.