Review of contributions from HDSSs to Sexual and Reproductive Health Research in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

The international community agrees that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will not be achieved without ensuring universal access to SRH services and HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.
The study reviews published papers on Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) that are based on Demographic and Health surveillance System (HDSS) platform in attempt to underscore the contributions of the INDEPTH Network platform to research effort and interventions on reproductive health in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). A list of search terms was generated by combining terms related to Demographic and Health surveillance (HIV, fertility etc). A call was sent out to INDEPTH centers requesting for their published SRH papers which used the HDSSs platform.
Findings reveals that school attendance considerably delays entry into motherhood. The studies on maternal health revealed that there has been a decline maternal death over the years, that is partly able to better access to emergency obstetric services, improved education of women and also reduction in fertility.
In conclusion, SRH is a significant public health need in all communities. However, we argue that HDSSs have a huge potential to become the key data source for monitoring the MDGs, particularly in the family planning, marriage and fertility studies.