The Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) in Niakhar, a rural area of Senegal, is located 135 km east of Dakar. This HDSS has been set up in 1962 by the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) to face the shortcomings of the civil registration system and provide demographic indicators.

Some 65 villages were followed annually in the Niakhar area from 1962 to 1969. The study zone was reduced to eight villages from 1969 to 1983, and from then on the HDSS was extended to include 22 other villages, covering a total of 30 villages for a population estimated at 45,000 in December 2013. Thus 8 villages have been under demographic surveillance for almost 50 years and 30 villages for 30years.

Vital events, migrations, marital changes, pregnancies, immunization are routinely recorded (every four months). The database also includes epidemiological, economic and environmental information coming from specific surveys. Data were collected through annual rounds from 1962 to 1987; rounds became weekly from 1987 to 1997; routine visits were conducted every three months between 1997and 2007 and every four months since then.

The current objectives are 1) to obtain a long-term assessment of demographic and socio-economic indicators necessary for bio-medical and social sciences research, 2) to keep up epidemiological and environmental monitoring, 3) to provide a research platform for clinical and interdisciplinary research (medical, social and environmental sciences). Research projects during the last 5 years are listed in Table 2. The Niakhar HDSS has institutional affiliation with the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD, formerly ORSTOM).

* Niakhar HDSS INDEPTH Core Dataset 1984-2016 (Release 2018). Provided by the INDEPTH Network Data Repository. www.indepth-network.og .

* DOI : "10.7796/INDEPTH.SN011.CMD2016.v1"

* https://doi.org/10.7796/INDEPTH.SN011.CMD2016.v1