INDEPTH: 6th Annual General and Scientific Meeting (360G-Wellcome-080517_Z_06_Z)

1.    6th Annual General and Scientific Meeting (6th AGM) INDEPTH is an international network currently consisting of 37 demographic surveillance system (DSS) field sites in 19 countries that collectively monitor 2,000,000 people at a household level. The sites are currently located in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania with the majority of sites located in sub-Saharan Africa. Each site operates in geographically defined populations, and conducts continuous, longitudinal, demographic monitoring, with timely production of data on all births, deaths, causes of death, and migration. This monitoring system provides a platform for the design and evaluation of a wide range of health care innovations as well as social, economic, behavioural and health interventions and research studies. Given their locations in different countries in the developing world, the INDEPTH Secretariat effectively uses email and telephone to communicate with its member sites. The Network identified the need for annual face-to-face meetings of its entire membership and hence made its Annual General and Scientific Meeting (AGM) an integral part of its governance structure. Full members of the INDEPTH Network, i.e., DSS sites represented by their site leaders or their designated representations of Demographic Surveillance System (DSS) sites attend, speak and vote at the AGM and receive all literature concerning the meetings. The Secretariat always determines a conference theme and subthemes for the session are determined by a scientific committee. The conference theme for 6th AGM is: Building Scientific Capacity for Health Surveillance and response in the Developing World. Subthemes that will be covered at this meeting are: Human Resources and Capacity Building for Health Surveillance DSS Supporting Public Health Policies DSS and Measuring Progress towards MDGs Human Resource Development and Research to Policy and Practice Ethics and Health Intervention Platforms Measuring Mortality and Morbidity of Poverty-related Diseases DSS Contribution to the monitoring and the response to the epidemic of HIV Technical Innovations for DSS Practitioners