UKZN’s Africa Centre Acknowledged by INDEPTH

BY: .

The International Network for the Demographic Evaluation of Population and Their Health (INDEPTH Network) - an organisation which collaborates with UKZN’s Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies - recently announced the launch of its INDEPTHStats application for tablets and mobile phones.

The INDEPTH Data Repository and INDEPTHStats are two online data archives which continue to build and strengthen capacity for research data management as well as share and improve free access to health and science research in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) for the benefit of individuals working in the public health space globally.

This is particularly important for UKZN’s Africa Centre which was created to conduct and support research addressing pressing population and reproductive health questions affecting people in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Centre, funded by the Wellcome Trust, is based in the Umkhanyakude district of KwaZulu-Natal where the burden of disease from HIV is immense. A cohort of 90 000 households are part of the on-going data collection.

Through INDEPTHStats, the Africa Centre is able to provide researchers, government officials and policymakers with information that can guide their decision-making, including crude birth and death rates, age specific fertility and death rates, infant, child, and under five mortality rates, as well as numerous other health and demographic indicators.

The Africa Centre’s Deputy Director, Dr Kobus Herbst is the Principle Investigator of the INDEPTH Data Management Programme (IDMP, formerly iSHARE2)? .

Executive Director, INDEPTH Network, Professor Osman Sankoh said: ‘On behalf of the Board and on myself, I wish to congratulate Dr Kobus Herbst and his indefatigable teams in Africa and Asia of the IDMP for working very hard to make these updates possible. Special thanks go to the leaders and data management teams of our member centres who worked tirelessly on their data in order to make these datasets available for wider international scientific inquiry.’

Herbst has worked with Health Partners (SA) on a variety of human resource planning projects in South Africa, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and Nigeria, involving the development of human resource modelling (HRPlanner) and management software programs (HRAdmin).

As the Principal Investigator of the IDMP, his role is to harmonise and improve access to data collected by member demographic and health surveillance sites in 21 African and 5 South-east Asian countries.

-          Words: MaryAnn Francis