Reflecting on the 2024 World Health Assembly Resolution: Need for Continued Improvement in Data Use in Sub-Saharan Africa

This blog post expands on comments that Agbessi Amouzou made at PMNCH’s Accountability Breakfast in September 2024. Dr. Amouzou is a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and leads Countdown’s effective coverage data & analysis center.

Watch a recording of the event:

 

As the World Health Assembly convenes in New York,  it is an opportunity to reflect on what’s needed to implement the 77th World Health Assembly resolution (WHA77) on accelerating progress on maternal, newborn and child mortality and achieve  the related Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Following are some key points to keep in mind, including how Countdown is contributing to improving the lives of women, children, and adolescents.

Reaching SDG 3 and implementing the new resolution will require greater focus on sub-Saharan Africa

In 2020, 70% of global maternal deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, according to an analysis led by the World Health Organization.  Globally 57% of child deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, while only 30% of births occur there, according to the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.

Learn more: Progress report from 36 Global Financing Facility (GFF) supported countries | Transition model of maternal and newborn mortality  | Need for accountability in adolescent health

Since the beginning of the SDG era, Countdown has pivoted to building the capacity of African countries to analyze reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition (RMNCAH+N) data

Countdown produces global reports, country profiles and case studies. Since 2016, Countdown’s model has evolved to include country collaborations in 22 African countries, and we are in the process  of adding four more. This work is conducted through partnership with the GFF and other international partners.

Learn more: Countdown’s Current Work | History & Achievements

For the past three years, Countdown has convened annual multi-country workshops with progressively more countries in sub-Saharan Africa, overlapping with the GFF Africa supported countries, to synthesize data from multiple sources that can be used to inform decision making in countries.

Reflections on the country chartbooks produced by the Countdown country collaborations  

During the annual multi-country workshop, participants from each country team complete a set of analyses which are then combined into a brief report; the 2024 reports are called chartbooks. Topics included are:

  • Health facility data quality assessment and denominator selection;
  • National coverage and quality: antenatal care (ANC), maternal newborn health (MNH), immunization, family planning;
  • Equity including subnational and gender inequalities;
  • Maternal mortality and stillbirth rates in health facilities;
  • Health services utilization: outpatient and admissions for under-5 children; and
  • Subnational coverage by health systems inputs

Some reflections on the chartbooks

After the workshop, countries finalize the analyses and the chartbooks are made available as a set of Powerpoint slides and a pdf version. The country teams then   disseminate the results at meetings with  colleagues from the ministry of health and other key stakeholders. including through existing country platform and working group convenings. An advantage of the Powerpoint format is that key findings from specific slides can be pulled out and showcased at relevant forum to stimulate discussion and action for women, children, and adolescents.  Some countries also lead trainings to teach the analysis skills to other analysts who did not attend the workshop.  Data are also shared on the Countdown website and on the GFF data portal.

Some examples of data use by country collaboration teams:  Burkina Faso | DR Congo | Ghana