S Kawar | PubMed Health

PubMed1991

Using routine surveys to measure mortality: a tool for programme managers.

Aid donors and recipients have begun to demand timely, population-based information for programme planning and for measuring health programme performance. Results from trials in Jordan, Syria, Djibouti and People's Democratic Republic of Yemen show that widely-used routine surveys for estimating vaccination coverage can be adapted to collect data on health indicators such as child and maternal mortality. Estimation methods must be robust and fieldwork well-supervised. Adding questions about total children ever born and surviving, the survival of the preceding birth, and the survival of sisters to such surveys, population-based estimates of the trend and recent level of childhood mortality and of the lifetime risk of maternal death can be obtained. These trials indicate that the need to monitor selected health indicators could be met through inexpensive, low-technology surveys.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

Estimating maternal mortality in Djibouti: an application of the sisterhood method.

In many developing countries even crude estimates of the level of maternal mortality are lacking and the prospects of fulfilling this need using conventional sources of vital registration and health service statistics are not encouraging. The constraint this imposes on the effective planning, management and evaluation of the programmes now being launched to reduce these neglected deaths is self-evident. It is less obvious how the majority of developing countries can be expected to meet the call for reliable estimates of maternal mortality by 1995. The sisterhood method provides a means of obtaining population-based estimates using household surveys for data collection. This paper describes the application of the method in Djibouti in the context of a rapid multi-purpose household survey in difficult field circumstances. In recent years the reduction of the level of maternal mortality in developing countries has become a priority for both national governments and international agencies. Attention has been drawn to the wide range of levels within and between countries and to the huge discrepancies in the lifetime risk of maternal death for women in the developed compared with the developing world. This risk has been estimated to range from 1 in 19 in West Africa to almost 1 in 10,000 in Northern Europe.

Adolescent↗