The word "Demographic Surveillance" means to keep close track of the population dynamics. Vadu HDSS deals with keeping track of health issues and demographic changes in Vadu rural health program (VRHP) area. It is one of the most promising projects of National relevance that aims at establishing a quasi-experimental intervention research setting with objectives
- To create a longitudinal data base for
- Efficient service delivery,
- Future research
- Linking all past micro-studies in Vadu area
- Monitoring trends in public health problems
- Keeping track of population dynamics
- Evaluation of intervention services.
The HDSS includes 22 villages from Shirur and Haweli blocks in the VRHP settings and a comparison area covering 18 villages from Khed block. It serves to monitor trends in demographic and health indicators like crude birth rate, crude death rate, migration rate, maternal mortality rate, infant, under five, neonatal, post-neonatal, early neonatal, still birth and perinatal mortality rates; as also indicators of fertility like age specific and Total Fertility Rate. One of the many innovative features of HDSS Vadu is surveillance through network of local people envisaging a sustainable surveillance system. Village level informants (VLI's) and Village level Data Collectors collect data of all sorts. VLIs keep a track of vital events viz. death, birth, marriage and migration. The Surveillance System is a combination of both passive (reporting of events by village level informants, Gram Panchayat records) and active surveillance (six monthly census and health worker visits to households).
Data base created under HDSS Vadu is used by research studies carried out in HDSS Vadu. Major output we get from such type of surveillance system is the periodic demographic statistics to see the changes in demographic pattern of the area. Which would help to formulate the health strategies for the hospital as a service provider. In addition various research studies are carried out along with regular surveillance such as Verbal Autopsy survey, non-communicable disease risk factor Surveillance, Fertility surveillance which would directly reflect on health related issues of the population.
