Navrongo Demographic Surveillance System (NDSS)
Location :Navrongo - Ghana
Investigators
:Dr.
Abraham Hodgson, Dr. Ayaga Bawah, Mr. George Wak, Dr.
Fred Binka
Funding
:Rockefeller
Foundation
Status
:On-going
Period Covered:
Demographic Profile
BACKGROUND
The Navrongo Demographic Surveillance System is the
bedrock of all research work at the NHRC. NDSS is
a continuous population registration system, which
assesses the demographic dynamics of the entire
population (142,000) of the Kassena-Nankana District.
Every 90 days all 14,500 compounds in the district are
visited to update vital events such as births, deaths,
pregnancy, marriages and migration in and out.
OBJECTIVE
The main objective of the Navrongo Demographic Surveillance
System (NDSS) is to maintain a longitudinal follow up of
the population dynamics of the Kassena-Nankana district
(about 139,000 people.) Every ninety days, the NDSS
collects and computer processes information on
pregnancies, births, deaths, internal and external
migrations, and marriages occurring in the district.
Verbal autopsies are conducted for all deaths reported
by the NDSS. In addition, information on educational
attainment, and vaccination status are updated once a
year.
UPDATES
The NDSS continues to fulfill its role as both a
database and research tool for the Navrongo Health
Research Centre (NHRC). The year 2004 has been both
challenging and exciting; challenging because we
continue to operate under very tight resource
constraints, particularly given the fact that the volume
of research projects that contribute resources to the
NDSS budget have dwindled considerably. On the other
hand, the year 2004, has been a historic one because of
the revolutionary transformation of our data collection
system from the compound level, to the household. This
will offer us the opportunity to further sharpen the
quality of research the NDSS offers. Thus, being a
dynamic population monitoring system, it is easily
tailored to the needs of the research centre. It
continues to update demographic events such as births,
deaths, migrations (in-and-out), pregnancies and other
important events, including intra-household dynamics in
approximately 90 days cycles. It updates immunization
and educational statuses of all eligible individuals
annually.
It
is important to note that 2004 marked a historic period
in the operations of the demographic surveillance
system. For the first time in its 10 years of existence,
we initiated the process of implementing data collection
at the household rather than at the compound level. This
we did by deploying the INDEPTH tool, which was designed
to the collection of demographic and socioeconomic data
at the household level for measuring equity in health.
Consequently, starting in the last round of the NDSS in
2004, we implemented the tool by reconfiguring the NDSS
data at the household level. Thus, beginning from
October 2004, in addition to collecting information on
the basic demographic characteristics at the HOUSEHOLD
level, we also collected information on human resources,
dwelling characteristics, food security, asset
ownership, as well as other indicators that might be of
specific interest to the Navrongo setting. All this
information was collected at the household level. This
is because the household is considered the most
appropriate social organization within families because
of common feeding arrangements and other resource
allocations. Although data collection in the field is
complete, data entry is still ongoing at the time of
preparing this report. We will therefore not report
results of this at this time.
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