A new report synthesizes the learning from the analysis conducted during and after the annual meeting held in 2023. Some key findings were that:
- Reporting rates were high in most countries, and districts with extreme outliers were uncommon, but some issues with internal consistency of the data were apparent.
- Calculation of denominators improved, with countries usually selecting facility-derived indicators.
- Coverage estimates for 2018-2022 showed small gains for four antenatal care visits, institutional deliveries, measles immunization, and family planning use and no change in third dose of pentavalent immunization.
- Family planning use increased in all countries except Niger, using estimates derived from Track 20’s Family Planning Estimation Tool.
- Subnational analysis found little change in inequalities in institutional birth and third dose of pentavalent immunization.
- Data for maternal deaths and stillbirths suggest an underreporting problem.
- Differences in outpatient and inpatient care for children are difficult to interpret because of variable reporting practices.
The report also outlines suggestions for improving the analysis and reporting for the 2024 annual meeting, which will take place in April. These include developing a more comprehensive report template and providing more editing and design support to enable countries to disseminate the reports more broadly.
Each year, in partnership with the Global Financing Facility (GFF), World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the West African Health Organization (WAHO), Countdown organizes a one-week multi-country analysis workshop (called the country annual meeting or CAM) for the African countries (in which Countdown has a country collaboration), plus other countries which have a GFF investment case. During the CAM, country teams analyze data related to reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition. Afterwards, they continue to finalize the analysis and produce a report based on the findings. Sometimes the reports are released on the Countdown website, other times they are used for countries’ health planning processes but not published online. Links to individual country reports which are available from 2023 are linked below.
Individual country reports from 2023:
Learn more:
- Video highlights from the 2023 annual meeting
- Blog post about 2023 annual meeting
- Data & analysis centers