DESIGN OF A SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM FOR PREGNANCY AND ITS OUTCOMES IN RURAL NEPAL

Abstract

IntroductionCommunity trials in low-income countries require monitoring and evaluation systems.The requirements of a community surveillance system include coherent design, training,field supervision and reporting, as well as the need for a robust and flexible database.Materials and methodsThis paper describes a surveillance system for identification of pregnancy and itsoutcomes in a rural area of Nepal. Mother Infant Research Activities (MIRA), incollaboration with the Institute of Child Health, London, are presently conducting astudy on the impact of a community-based participatory intervention to improveessential newborn care (ENC) in rural Nepal. The study is a cluster randomisedcontrolled trial involving 12 pairs of Village Development Committees (VDCs) inMakwanpur District. The surveillance system covers approximately 28 000 householdsand 28 000 married women of reproductive age. It was designed to identify pregnancy,its outcome for mother and infant, and activities such as antenatal care and problem-related health care seeking behaviour.DiscussionThe paper describes the processes of mapping and enumeration, pregnancyidentification, conduct of interviews, quality control and data management.Key Words: data quality, database, rural Nepal.