DHSS Gateway

Abstract: About 80 percent of the earth’s population live in poverty, the majority living in third world countries. To combat issues related to poverty, such as child mortality, it is important to have a system in place for continuous monitoring of demographic, health and socioeconomic events within the population. A demographic surveillance system (DSS) continuously monitors a subset of a population within a specific area, registering events such as births, deaths, and migrations. Information collected is used for educational purposes and for constructing public health program aimed at improving the general wellbeing of the population. Furthermore, it acts as foundation for sub-studies related to health and socioeconomic factors such as mapping teenage sexuality and reproduction, sexual risk behavior, domestic violence and so forth. There are numerous DSS sites set up today all over the world, most of which can be found in developing countries throughout Africa and Asia. One such site is located in Central America, in the municipality of León, Nicaragua, where a subset of the population living within the municipality is under continuous surveillance. The result of this thesis is a prototype for a system intended to be used at the DSS site in León, supporting the registration and usage of collected demographic, health and socioeconomic related information.