MUCHAP-Iganga Mayuge HDSS conducts household update rounds twice a year using paper based protocol of data collection but prepares to shift towards tablet based electronic data collection.
The core demographic and health events covered are migrations, births, deaths and verbal autopsy. Other modules collected are pregnancy, education, injury and socio-economic status. Core research areas include; population demographic surveillance, communicable and non-communicable diseases surveillance, health systems research, implementation science, poverty, agriculture, climate change, environment, technology and social science research.
To strengthen the vital statistics, pregnancies and their outcomes, deaths and their causes are collected continuously throughout the year using a network of community based village health team members who notifies and report all pregnancies, births and deaths occurring in the community. Trained HDSS research assistants follow-up all the reported events to expedite the process of conducting verbal autopsy and completing a tool for all pregnancies and their outcomes.
Iganga Mayuge HDSS covers a contiguous and clearly demarcated area of 155km2, a part of Iganga and a part of Mayuge districts. It is made up of 65 villages in seven sub-counties and it is enclosed by 16 health centres and a hospital. Currently, the HDSS covers a population of 90,000 people from 17,000 households, about 59% living in rural areas.
