National Bureau of Statistics

TANZANIA DEMOGRAPHIC AND HEALTH SURVEY

PROGRESS REPORT AS OF AUGUST 2009

The Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS) have been carried out approximately every five years since the first one was implemented in 1991/92. In the absence of a well functioning complete vital registration system and a health information reporting system the TDHS provides valuable information on fertility, mortality as well as on prevalence of childhood illnesses and utilization of health services. The most recent TDHS was conducted in 2004/05.

The National Bureau of Statistics is currently preparing to conduct another TDHS in 2009/10 which will provide information to address the monitoring and evaluation needs of health, family planning and HIV AIDS programmes and provide program managers and policy makers involved in these programmes with information that they need to effectively plan and implement future interventions.

The Tanzania government is planning to for fortification of several food items with micronutrients like iron and vitamin A. As such the survey would be important in establishing baseline measures of micronutrients levels among children and women prior to the fortification.

Survey Objectives

The objectives of the 2009/10 TDHS are to collect high quality data that will provide quality information on fertility levels and preferences, family planning use, reproduction, child and maternal health, nutritional status of young children and women, childhood mortality levels, ownership and use of mosquito bed-nets, prevalence and treatment of childhood illnesses, knowledge and behaviour regarding HIV/AIDS, maternal mortality, prevalence of domestic violence, fistula and female genital mutilation. A related objective is to produce these results in a timely manner and ensure that the data are disseminated widely so that they can be useful to programme managers and policy makers within and outside Tanzania.

Progress

a) Sample Design

The sample for the 2009/10 TDHS is a stratified, two stage weighted sample of about 10,400 households selected from the 2002 Population and Housing frame. The sample is expected to produce interviews with about 10,400 women of reproductive age (15 – 49 years) and about 2,600 men aged 15-49 in approximately 475 sample points. Men will be interviewed in every third household.

The sample selection for the survey has already been done since June 2009.

b) Listing of Heads of Households

The listing exercise for the survey started in mid - July 2009 and is expected to be completed by the end of August 2009. A total of 14 teams (11 teams on the Mainland and 3 teams in Zanzibar) are doing the listing exercise. Each team consists of a team leader, two listing clerks and a driver. So far they have already covered about 85 percent of the sample points.

c) Survey Pre – test

The pre- test for the survey was done from the 23^rd July 2009 for 15 days. Ten days were used for the training and 5 days for the data collection. There were 8 trainers (3 from NBS, 1 from the Office of Chief government Statistician, Zanzibar, 2 from the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, 1 from the Ministry of Community Development, Gender and Children and 1 from Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre. There were two consultants from Macro international and 16 nurses (11 were females and 5 were males). There were also one staff from the Statistical Methods and Standards Department of the National Bureau of Statistics (for Quality Control Purposes) and another staff from the IT Department (Data Processing).

Current Activities

The listing exercise is progressing well and is expected to be completed by the end of August 2009.

The report writing on the pre-test is being prepared

The survey instruments are being reviewed basing on the experience gained during the pre test exercise.

Challenges

• Some of the food fortification questions especially those related to brand names needs some modifications
• The women individual questionnaire is long and it takes a lot of time to administer.
• Due to the large number of biomarkers to be tested, the training period of three weeks earmarked for the main survey is not enough as the biomarker training alone will take two weeks.
• Some of the selected sample points have been declared game reserves by the Government. As such reselection of the sample points have to be done to replace them, this was done after consultation with Macro International.

To view TDHS 2004/5 click here

                           TDHS 2009/2010 Preliminary Result  click here