Setting health priorities right - Indepth Network provides useful data

Friday, September 26, 2008 (Daily Graphic Pg 7)

By Rebecca Kwei
THE year was 1998 and the venue, White Sands Hotel, Dar-es Salaam, Tanzania. There, about 40 people, including scientists, researchers, funders and academicians met to constitute Indepth Network, an independent international organisation to provide health, social and demographic data and research to enable developing countries set health priorities and policies, based on scientific evidence.
Significantly, Indepth Network’s 8th annual general meeting (AGM) takes place at Dar-es Salaam, Tanzania, from September 22 -26, 2008, at the White Sands Hotel. It is on the theme: “INDEPTH @ 10: From knowledge generation to improved health policy and practice.”
Currently, the network is working together with 37 partner community-based health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) sites in 19 countries in Africa, Asia, Central America and Oceania.
“Through this platform, the network has been playing a major role in co-ordinating the activities of these research institutions in the evaluation and monitoring of health outcomes and the burden of diseases in several countries. It has also been involved in the training and capacity development of scientists in Africa and Asia where the sites are located,” said Prof. Fred Binka, Dean of Public Health, University of Ghana, and who was the first Executive Director of Indepth Network.
Ten years in the life of any institution is no mean achievement and for Indepth Network, 10 years of working hard to bring reliable health information to bear on policy and planning in developing countries has been worthwhile.
“Indepth feels it is time to reflect on the work done in the past 10 years, achievements made, lessons learnt and general paradigm shifts, if any. There is need to review our approaches, capacities and networking,” says Dr Osman Sankoh, the new Executive Director of Indepth Network.
Over the years, the network has researched and collected data in many countries to provide a better, empirical understanding of health, nutrition, food security and social issues, and to apply this understanding to alleviate the most severe development and social challenges.
With a secretariat in Accra, Indepth Network has since 2000 been making systematic efforts to harness and make widely available data from various HDSS sites to fill the existing void in vital health information needed for planning.
In Ghana, the sites are located at Dodowa, Kintampo and Navrongo. The collection of data in these well-defined areas are done on a continuous basis and this helps to provide timely information for planning and service provision to communities.
According to Dr Sankoh, research generated from some of the INDEPTH sites in Ghana has resulted in the formulation of some national health policies.
An example is the Community-based Health and Planning Services (CHIPS), which is now the government's policy for delivering health services to the people of Ghana. CHIPS approach had its origins in ground-breaking research carried out at the Navrongo Health Research Centre in Northern Ghana.
Another example is the use of insecticide-treated bednets, whose pioneering research was also done at Navrongo. Also, the Dodowa District is being used to evaluate the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
Among the scientific and policy findings that have been developed, tested and demonstrated by HDSS sites are the effectiveness of Insecticide Treated Nets (ITNs) in reducing the incidence of malaria mortality; the impact of expanding the health care workers on health outcomes in a community and the first real model life tables for sub-Saharan Africa, which had previously relied on estimates based on non-African populations.
The impact of expanding the health care workers on health outcomes in a community; the first real model life tables for sub-Saharan Africa, which had previously relied on estimates over a hundred years, and family planning strategies tested at Matlab have been adopted nationwide and have led to Bangladesh’s recognition at the 1994 United Nations Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, a family planning success story, are all some of the success stories of Indepth.
One major boost of INDEPTH Network's projects for which Ghana is at the forefront is the establishment of the Malaria Clinical Trials Alliance (MCTA) in 2006 with a $17 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the INDEPTH Network.
The main goal of MCTA is to facilitate site preparation for the effective conduct of clinical trials for life-saving malaria interventions such as vaccines and drugs. MCTA is also supporting sites to develop tools to assess the disease profiles of countries, while encouraging the wise use of resources in resource-constrained countries in Africa.
Currently, there are 16 trial sites in 10 African countries (Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania and The Gambia) on the MCTA platform. An international Management Board, headed by former Prime Minister of Mozambique, Dr Pascaol Mocumbi, was constituted.
Dr Sankoh sees a bright future for Indepth — “with many funders willing to give more support. The intention is to make Indepth a one-stop shop for all data and information related to population and health baseline research in the developing world,” he said.
Also, research protocols/principles and lessons generated will be shared through appropriate platforms as well as increase the capacities of scientists to deliver.