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- Published on: 19 September 2018
- Published on: 19 September 2018Geographic Coverage of Surveillance systems: is the Sub Saharan Africa region being misrepresented?
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We read with interest the paper: ‘Geographic coverage of demographic surveillance systems for characterising the drivers of childhood mortality in sub-Saharan Africa’ (1). This paper raises a few points that we would like to discuss (1). We focus on the authors’ extrapolation of findings from their study on children’s under five mortality [U5M] rates to the entire sub-Saharan Africa region. Other determinants we discuss include urban-rural disparities, factors that affect accessibility to health care services and the effect of political conflict in the region on under five mortality rates.
Firstly, we discuss the use of data from the east and the west regions in Africa generalised to the entire Sub Saharan Africa [SSA] region (1). The regions covered in the analysis are represented in figure 1 of the original paper by Utazi et al. (1). They point out that civil and vital registration systems are incomplete and weak in SSA (1) which makes data derived from Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems [HDSS] more important to monitor trends and causes of under-five mortality in the region (1). Although many countries in SSA region have similar features and characteristics, analysis from a limited number of countries from either the east or the west of SSA should not be used to generalise to all countries in the SSA region (2). The disadvantages of using data generalised to the broad SSA region were discussed by Cooper et al (2). We believe the resu...Conflict of Interest:
None declared.