Global estimates of country health indicators: useful, unnecessary, inevitable?

BACKGROUND: The MDG era relied on global health estimates to fill data gaps and ensure temporal and cross-country comparability in reporting progress. Monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals will present new challenges, requiring enhanced capacities to generate, analyse, interpret and use country produced data.

OBJECTIVE: To summarize the development of global health estimates and discuss their utility and limitations from global and country perspectives.

DESIGN: Descriptive paper based on findings of intercountry workshops, reviews of literatureon and synthesis of experiences.

RESULTS: Producers of global health estimates focus on the technical soundness of estimation methods and comparability of the results across countries and over time. By contrast, country users are more concerned about the extent of their involvement in the estimation process and hesitate to buy into estimates derived using methods their technical staff cannot explain and that differ from national data sources. Quantitative summaries of uncertainty may be of limited practical use in policy discussions where decisions need to be made about what to do next.

CONCLUSIONS: Greater transparency and involvement of country partners in the development of global estimates will help improve ownership, strengthen country capacities for data production and use, and reduce reliance on externally produced estimates.