OBJECTIVES To describe the methods used in the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to collect nationally representative data on the prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and assess the value of such data to country HIV surveillance systems. METHODS During 2001-04, national samples of adult women and men in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Mali, Kenya, United Repu...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE Sri Lanka has been able to achieve low childhood mortality levels at low cost. However, this achievement may have been at the expense of increasing mortality inequalities between socio-economic groups. This study addresses the question whether socio-economic mortality inequalities rise as overall mortality falls by describing socio-economic inequalities in under 5 mortali...

In this paper, we first show how the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) can be integrated with other data sources to expand the types of variables available for analysis of population and health outcomes. Second, we demonstrate one particular example of such integration by modelling the social, physical, and built environment determinants of health outcomes at the district level in Ghana, Mal...

Socio-demographic factors associated with contraceptive use among young women in comparison with older women in Uganda JOHN BOSCO ASIIMWE, PATRICIA NDUGGA*, JOHN MUSHOMI* *School of Statistics and Planning, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. Abstract Much of the research literature about the use of family planning generalizes contraceptive use among all women, using age as a covariate. In Ug...

OBJECTIVES To describe recent trends in age at first sex in African countries, identifying and making due allowances for a variety of common reporting errors. METHODS Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data from six African countries conducting three or more surveys since 1985 were analysed using survival analysis techniques, combining information on virginity status and retrospective repor...

A key limitation of existing research on the influence of family structure on child outcomes in cultures characterized by widespread polygamy is the implicit view of marriage as monolithic and by default monogamous. In the African context, there is the need to make a distinction between polygamous and monogamous mothers since these marital circumstances imply varying levels of parental support ...

Methodology A community based descrip ve cross-sec onal study was carried out by medical students during their field placement for nd community diagnosis in Dukuchhap Village of Lalitpur from 22 th November19 December 2017. All 10-19 years adolescent popula on was included in the study. Among the total popula on (2545) study, 474 were adolescent. The data were collected using semi-structured qu...

BACKGROUND Estimates of the period mean age at first birth are readily available for countries with accurate vital statistics (i.e., in much of the developed world). In contrast, in most developing countries vital statistics are lacking or incomplete and estimates of the period mean age at first birth are therefore often unavailable. The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) program provides a l...

BACKGROUND Developing effective context-specific strategies to ensure that a high proportion of children receive timely and appropriate care requires knowing the source from which care is sought. Although Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) collect such data in disaggregated form, they are not made available in the standard DHS and MICS reports. ...