DHS in the News

Journalists worldwide write about The DHS Program results. The dissemination of DHS, SPA and HIV data is often widely covered by media in survey countries, but journalists also use The DHS Program data throughout the year as background information for their stories, or to compare health and development indicators across countries. These data are also used by journalists in the United States and other developed countries, as it is considered the gold standard of population, health and nutrition data. Below are some examples of recent news coverage. Please note: The links below are to websites outside The DHS Program.

Nov 21, 2007
Uganda: Fifty-eight percent of women give birth at home

Luke Kagiri
NEW VISION (Uganda)

Fifty-eight percent of Ugandan women give birth in their homes, according to the 2006 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey. The research, conducted by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, showed that the percentage of Ugandan mothers giving birth from health facilities had increased in the past 10 years.

According to the report, carried out every after five years, 42% of the women gave birth in an institution, compared with 38% in 2000 and 36% in 1995...

http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/19/598345
Jul 18, 2007
Number of orphans spikes as Zimbabwe crises deepen: Rise in HIV, fall of economy cited
John Donnelly
THE BOSTON GLOBE (USA)

...The 2006 survey, conducted by the government Central Statistical Office in collaboration with Macro International, a Maryland-based organization that conducts health surveys around the world, found that 22 percent of children under the age of 18 in Zimbabwe had lost one or both parents, up from 9 percent in 1994 and 14 percent in 1999. Overall, Zimbabwe recorded an 18 percent HIV-prevalence rate among adults, said the survey....
http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2007/07/18/number_of_orphans_spikes_as_zimbabwe_crises_deepen/
Jun 28, 2007
The not-so-fair sex: Women may be more responsible for spreading HIV than has been suspected

THE ECONOMIST

...For work by Vinod Mishra of Macro International, a research firm under contract to the American government, suggests women are not always the innocent vessels that HIV epidemiology takes them for. And that, in turn, means the models that epidemiology relies on may be wrong.

Dr Mishra presented his findings at the HIV/AIDS Implementers' Meeting held last week in Kigali. He had examined medical and demographic surveys from 11 African countries in order to extract data on what are known as discordant couples...

http://www.economist.com/node/9401560?story_id=9401560
Apr 06, 2006
How AIDS in Africa was overstated: Reliance on data from urban prenatal clinics skewed early projections

Craig Timberg
WASHINGTON POST FOREIGN SERVICE (USA)

...The study and similar ones in 15 other countries have shed new light on the disease across Africa. Relying on the latest measurement tools, they portray an epidemic that is more female and more urban than previously believed, one that has begun to ebb in much of East Africa and has failed to take off as predicted in most of West Africa...

...Most of the studies were conducted by ORC Macro, a research corporation based in Calverton, Md., and were funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, other international donors and various national governments in the countries where the studies took place...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/05/AR2006040502517_pf.html
Sep 10, 1989
Birth control making inroads in populous Kenya

Jane Perlez
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES (USA)

Kenya's birth rate has dropped, the first sign that the rate of population growth, the highest in the world, may be slowing, a Government survey shows.

In the last five years, the average number of children per Kenyan woman of childbearing age has dropped from 7.7 to 6.7, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey of 1989....

Read full article>>

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/10/world/birth-control-making-inroads-in-populous-kenya.html