Bloomberg Philanthropies https://www.bloomberg.org recently made an additional $120 million in funding available through the “Data for Health Initiative” to help governments in developing countries gather accurate data about the health of their citizens. This brings the total amount committed to the “Data for Health Initiative” to $220 million and will enable the initiative to expand from 20 to 25 countries.
The funding will make it possible to help strengthen the quality of birth and death registrations and enable decision makers to use the data. Less than half of all deaths around the world are registered with a cause given, meaning that 29.4 million deaths go unrecorded each year. This lack of data disproportionately affects low and middle income countries with 60% of these countries representing 2 billion people that are not reporting any data.
Also, the births of nearly 40% of the 128 billion children born each year are not officially recorded which can potentially deny the child access to healthcare, education, and government services.
Over the past four years, Bloomberg Philanthropies has invested $100 million to help 20 low and middle income nations improve the quality and accuracy of birth and death registration by modernizing national reporting systems, helping governments train medical professionals and community health workers to more accurately record causes of death, and have established consistent reporting
In addition, select countries will be able to monitor non-communicable disease risk factors such as tobacco use via innovative mobile surveys. In addition, the countries will be able to establish cancer registries for the first time.
Several examples of successful partnerships to help government improve data collection include:
- The number of death records reported in Peru electronically has increased from just 20% in 2016 to nearly 100% and data is now able to be released is just two weeks.
- Data concerning out of hospital deaths, is being collected for the first time in 12 countries and has expanded to two additional countries
The “Data for Health Initiative” is working with governments to improve relevant laws like eliminating fees and administrative barriers for families to register a death. Also existing WHO guidelines are being used to track cancer data in select countries by establishing population-based cancer registries.
To move the initiative forward, partners will work with governments, and provide aid to organizations and public health leaders with better tools and systems to collect the data. Partners include the University of Melbourne, CDC through their National Vital Statistics System, Johns Hopkins University, WHO, and the Global Health Advocacy Incubator.
Go to https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/healthprotection/data.html for more information on CDC’s involvement in global health.