KINTAMPO HEALTH DEMOGRAPHIC SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM

January 9, 2019 | Ongoing Project | Reading time: 5 min

Resident Population as of: 540,000
Parent institution: Kintampo Health Research Centre (KHRC)
Start Date: 02-06-2003
End Date:29-10-2032

The Health and Demographic Surveillance System serves as a resource to assess the demographic or health impact of various health interventions in the study area and also serve as the central population pool for the Research Centre. . The system is designed to maintain a longitudinal database through routine rounds of updates and visits to households. Field staff collect core demographic data such as migrations, pregnancies, births and deaths across our catchment areas made up of Six (6) districts in the Bono East Region of Ghana.

The study is also responsible for the conduct of Verbal Post Mortem (VPM) for all participant deaths within the study area using the WHO INTER-VA questionnaire. Currently, rounds of update occur twice (2) a year and last for a period of 6 months, however, depending on the availability of resources, the rounds of visit can be more frequent. The HDSS also serves as the platform for additional modules (socio-economic data, vaccinations, phone access and use etc.) to supplement core demographic data.

The KHDSS operates by enumerating all compounds with unique numbers. Then an initial census is conducted by registering individuals (name, sex, and date of birth) in each compound at the household level. This is to provide baseline demographic data on all residents. Each registered individual is assigned a unique permanent identification number that facilitates tracking and follow-up of persons within the system. Subsequently, regular rounds of data collection are done to update the system by registering all new individuals and households. Entry into the system after the initial census is mainly through birth and in-migrations and the main ways by which people exit the system are through death and out-migration.

Vital demographic events including birth, death and migrations occurring within the study sites are recorded in each round of visits. In the event of death, Verbal Autopsies are conducted to help ascertain the cause of death.

The KHDSS seeks to:
• Provide baseline information to inform further research activities.
• Serve as a source for selecting potential study participants for surveys, clinical trials, and other studies.
• Make provision for subsequent follow-up of participants in the other projects carried out by the Research Centre.
• Provide data for monitoring basic demographic and health indicators (fertility, mortality rates, and trends, etc) in the catchment area

Field operations
Routine updates and other data collection are done electronically since its data management system was migrated from FoxPro (i.e. the Household Registration System2 (HRS2)) to the Open Health and Demographic System (OpenHDS) platform in 2018. Two update rounds were conducted in 2021. In both update rounds, data on the core demographic events (pregnancy, births, deaths and migration) were collected. Also, the socio-economic status of all households (profile), was updated and Socio-demographic data (Women Form) of all women within the reproductive age was collected. Again, verbal post-mortems (VPMs) are conducted electronically by trained field workers using the WHO 2016 InterVA tool.

Demographic Characteristics of the HDSS
The total resident population of the HDSS as of 2020 was 456,478 across its three sites, with 52.3% being females. The HDSS surveillance area is largely rural (53.1%) with an average household size of 4.7. With regards to events, over 9,900 births were recorded in 2020 while 2,147 deaths were recorded. Of these deaths, verbal autopsy was conducted for about 2000 of them representing about 93% of all deaths recorded.

The study seeks to understand the trends of demographic characteristics such as the in-flow and out-flow of migrations, the frequency of pregnancies and their outcomes (livebirths, stillbirth, miscarriage and abortions) and also to determine the cause of deaths within our study areas. These data are collected and analyzed to influence health decisions and policies both locally and internationally and also serve as population database for other studies.