Johannesburg, 28 September 2015 - South Africa’s health information systems provide a rich source of data on the burden of disease caused by tuberculosis (TB) and the effectiveness of efforts to reduce this burden, both of which are crucial for public health action. However, the available data are often underused, or not used at all. At least in part, this may reflect the absence of clear guidance on recommended approaches to the analysis of such data.

Recently WHO produced the handbook Understanding and Using Tuberculosis Data in order to address this gap. In the first training of its type since the handbook was released, the WHO Country Office, in collaboration with the National Department of Health TB programme, organized a five day workshop with detailed practical examples of the analysis of TB surveillance data. This included monitoring data quality, data cleaning and de-duplication, analysis of case-based TB notification data, analysis of drug-resistant TB, analysis of HIV-associated TB and estimating mortality using national vital registration system data.

National and Provincial TB programme managers, Provincial monitoring and evaluation officers, TB researchers including epidemiologists and statisticians, and data quality officers from South Africa joined in the workshop in Johannesburg on 28 September to 2 October. The WHO Country Representative in South Africa opened the meeting and welcomed the participants. Read her statement here .