Report on the Thirty-third Session
of the United Nations Statistical Commission
on Health Statistics, March 2002
The Thirty-third Session of the United Nations Statistical
Commission took place from 5 to 8 March 2002 in New York, New York, USA.
The Commission reviewed the ongoing work of groups of countries and international
organizations in various fields of demographic, social, economic and environmental
statistics and on certain cross-cutting issues in statistics.1 The Pan
American Health Organization stimulated the inclusion of the issue of
health statistics in the agenda and the item was discussed during the
session for the first time in many years. A course of action was defined
for all the statistical fields. In the particular case of health statistics,
the Commission:
(a) approved actions by the United Nations Statistics Division
(UNSD) to support population and housing censuses to be undertaken by
countries between 2005 and 2014;(1)
(b) requested the World Health Organization (WHO) to strengthen
coordination of its statistical program with those of international organizations
and countries and continue to improve the rigor of the methods used to
generate statistics for its World Health Report;(1)
The issue of health statistics was addressed by the Commission
based on a report prepared by the WHO, which summarized the activities
and plans of the Organization. One major area of WHO’s statistical work
as presented in the report is the measurement of levels and inequalities
in health. For overall population health, WHO has been collecting
mortality data on a routine basis, and is now trying to improve data collection
on morbidity as well. Related statistical activities center around two
inputs: age-sex specific death rates and prevalence of ill-health by age,
sex and severity. In order to obtain detailed data on these components
of healthy life expectancy, WHO has been planning to initiate a World
Health Survey in all member states, and is developing approaches to
solve the problem of comparability of self-reported data. In the area
of health inequalities, WHO’s plans involves the analysis of their
extent using different approaches and methodologies. Other related epidemiological
activities linked to the availability of health statistics include the
regional and global burden of disease calculations; a comparative
risk assessment project for 25 major risk factors worldwide; and the
construction of other summary measures of population health.(2)
Other areas of work of WHO mentioned in the report include
health system performance, national health accounts, coverage of health
systems interventions and the family of international classifications
for health statistics.(2)
The United Nations Commission welcomed the WHO report on
Health Statistics. However, the report generated a critical debate, which
led to the following recommendations. The Commission:(1)
a) requested WHO to:
i) strengthen coordination of its statistical program with the statistical
work of the involved international organizations and countries,
ii) continue to improve the rigor of the methods used to generate statistics
for the World Health Report,
iii) hold further consultations with countries on methodology for the
World Health Survey; and
iv) improve coordination and intensify consultation with interested countries
and concerned organizations on developing a system of health statistics,
before launching the World Health Survey;
b) noted that WHO considers the vital registration system
to be the preferred source for death statistics and emphasized the importance
of supporting improved vital registration systems; and
c) requested that the item of health statistics be included
on the agenda at the next session of the Commission.
Source:
(1) United Nations. Report of the Thirty-third Session of the Statistical
Commission. New York, NY, USA; March 2002.
(2) World Health Organization. Report on Health Statistics for the Thirty-third
Session of the United Nations Statistical Commission. New York, NY, USA;
March 2002.
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