Friday Newsletter
Dear Centre Leaders,
Greetings from the INDEPTH Training and Resource Centre. We hope you had a fruitful week.  We have the following items for your kind attention:
  • Prof. Hannah Akuffo (Sida, Sweden) visits INDEPTH 
  • Two PhD students from the INDEPTH OPTIMUNISE project successfully defend  theses
  • Matlab HDSS: Monitoring of clinical conditions may curb soaring C-section deliveries in Bangladesh
  • SEACO HDSS, Malaysia participates in Community Event at Gemereh
1) Prof. Hannah Akuffo (Sida, Sweden) visits INDEPTH 
(left to right): Sixtus Apaliyah (Finance Manager), Dr Mamusu Kamanda (Ag Science Programme Manager), Mr Francis Ameni (ICT/Data Manager) and Prof Osman Sankoh (Executive Director)
The INDEPTH Resource and Training Centre in Accra was on 18th January 2018 honoured by a courtesy call by Prof. Hannah Akuffo from the Swidish International Development Agency (Sida) in Stockholm. Osman and team held good discussions concerning the current status of the Network as the New Year rolls on. Sida is one of the key core support funders of INDEPTH contributing to the Network’s overall scientific, capacity strengthening and policy engagement activities.
2) Two PhD students from the INDEPTH OPTIMUNISE project successfully defend  theses
INDEPTH is pleased to announce to the Network that Syed Hanifi and Paul Welaga successfully defended their PhD theses at Southern Danish University on the 12  and 15 January 2018 respectively.  Prof Peter Aaby of Bandim HDSS expressed his happiness in working with them and indicated that the two have really advanced their respective areas.
 
The OPTIMUNISE of INDEPTH’s Vaccinations & Child Survival Working Group led by Peter Aaby took advantage of the HDSS infrastructure to test the real life impact of child interventions on overall mortaliaty. OPTIMUNISE is being implemented at three INDEPTH member sites in Guinea-Bissau (Bandim Health Project), Burkina Faso (Nouna), and Ghana (Navrongo). As a basis for the studies, OPTIMUNISE modified the HDSS data collection systems to include information on all interventions in childhood.
3) Matlab HDSS: Monitoring of clinical conditions may curb soaring C-section deliveries in Bangladesh
An icddr,b study on over 2500 childbirths under its Matlab Health and Demographic Surveillance (HDSS) area found that around 35% of these deliveries were caesarean section (C-section) and only 1.4% of these C-sections were conducted for absolute maternal indications (AMI). Read more
4) SEACO HDSS, Malaysia participates in Community Event at Gemereh
January 12 – Friday, SEACO team received an invitation from residents of Taman Bunga Raya, Gemereh to join the gotong-royong in conjunction with the Majlis Sambutan Maulidur Rasul. SEACO took this opportunity to mingle with the locals while sharing information on SEACO’s current projects. SEACO team also managed to conducted data collection for the Census project. Read more
Policy Engagement and Communications