HEALTH KWAZULU-NATAL
Fighting Disease, Fighting Poverty, Giving Hope
Silwa Nezifo, Silwa Nobubha, Sinika Ithemba

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Health Indicators for KwaZulu-Natal

This is a joint ongoing effort of the Epidemiology unit of the Department of Health (DoH) and the Italian Cooperation. The objective is to provide users with access to reliable demographic, epidemiological and management indicators. This has been done by reviewing existing data sources (e.g. MRC) and by collecting extra data (e.g. hospital admissions survey) to fill the gaps. The information has been organized into the health statistics available for KZN profile, epidemiological database, and the various epidemiological bulletins issued by the Italian Cooperation and the Epidemiology unit.

The health statistics profile provides the user with a quick access to the available demographic, epidemiological and management indicators. This is presented in tables, and where possible the tables are arranged by age and gender. This allows users to have access to reliable information, to quantify the health problems and to produce policies and strategies to tackle them.
The epidemiological database is created by regularly reviewing all data sources that may have demographic and epidemiological information. This also includes data from the active data collection and analysis such as data from the hospital discharges survey. Unlike the health statistics profile, the database provides the possibility of building queries to select different indicators and to access extra information on the studies used to build the epidemiological database. The statistics available on the indicator appear in a Table.

The Epidemiological bulletins cover specific topics. Issues 1 to 5 deal with the epidemiological profile and Issue 6 analyses the hospital admissions for the period between 1998 and 2002. Validation of hospital information is presented in issues 7, 8, and 11, while issue 9 describes the hospital utilization for the FY 03/04 – FY 04/05. Issue 10 describes the status of the ART program based on the weekly indicators collected by each unit.