Epidemiological approaches to health planning, management and evaluation

The promotion of health and the prevention of disease depend to a large extent on the good planning and management of health programmes. Good planning and management in turn depend on the availability of reliable, accurate and timely information about the health situation. All countries have institution-based systems for the collection of routine information about health-services delivery. Many countries also use surveys to obtain information about other aspects of the health situation. This issue of the World health statistics quarterly describes two types of surveillance which may be used to supplement (or compensate for the absence of) nationwide routine systems or surveys, and a method for evaluating surveillance systems. It also includes articles on the International Classification of Diseases and Causes of Death (ICD) and the International Health Regulations (IHR) in relation to their use for planning and management. Two alternative surveillance systems are described. One uses institution- or city-based records of incidence of target diseases of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in a number of developing countries to determine the impact of minimization on the reduction of disease. In this article, some additional background material is reviewed on sentinel hospitals and cities in India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Malawi and United Republic of Tanzania. The other system is based on district-level household surveys of mortality, morbidity and nutrition-related indicators in Kerala State (India) carried out by trained local personnel who live in the districts.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)