Data sources for Core Indicators

For selected indicators, data providers are national health authorities, specifically national technical programs, and National Statistical Offices. These data are channeled through PAHO technical programs that receive, review, and validate data before dissemination. Other data providers are the Population Division of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UN programs and agencies such as UNICEF, WHO, UNESCO, World Bank. A major data provider is WHO, which hosts the Global Health Observatory and the Global Health Expenditure database.

These data sources were defined to ensure comparability between countries. Therefore, data may differ from national statistics.

Comparability and data quality

Data was reviewed for completeness and consistency, but users should interpret data with caution as definitions, estimation methodology and coverage (public/private) may differ across countries.

For vital statistics indicators, data may have one or more of the following limitations for international comparability: preliminary data, coverage of maternal deaths, infant deaths, neonatal deaths and live births; differences in the maternal death definition; different denominators, and the analysis of only confirmed maternal deaths.

We continue to collect core indicators from Bonaire, San Eustatius, and Saba (BES). In this dataset, BES data is not included.