Episode #106 - Why should you care about Data?

VGS We're talking about data today. Why should you care about data? How can health data help you? Here to talk to us about it is Dr Samira Asma. Welcome, Samira. Samira talk to us about what health data can do for us. Why should we care about it?

SA  Vismita why we should care about data is that data is just not about numbers. Data is about life and death and quality of life. Data is about people we interact with every day - our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children. Data is used to empower them. And data is also used to hold ourselves accountable as well as the world accountable for the right decisions we should make to make the environments healthier for populations. Let me start by a basic question. Is that, what kills most of the people? The fact of the matter is, today many of the deaths go unrecorded and we don't know for many deaths and many people - what kills them? The cause of death is not recorded and with that, we have a blind spot. And data truly tells us where to invest, where to make a difference. Without data, we are truly flying blind.

VGS  So Samira, what you're describing is if we don't have data on births and deaths, clearly there is missing data a lot of the times probably misrepresented data. So actually, give us some examples of when health data has been used to save lives. 

SA There has always been data that has driven successes in global health. For example, we know that tobacco use is responsible for a billion deaths in this century, and we know that many more billions of people will have disability or will be driven into poverty as a result of tobacco use. And with having good data on tobacco use and tobacco control policies, we are able to know what solutions work the most to prevent kids from starting to smoke, or for adults to quit.

And we have very good cases, for example, from Philippines and Thailand, where those governments had the foresight and increased tobacco price as a result of tobacco taxation and revenues were generated that resulted in that these governments were able to fund their healthcare systems and health promotion in their respective countries. But we want more countries to use this evidence and data to drive these promising policies.

VGS  WHO works with data all the time, and a lot of the times data will be questioned when we generate a report. Talk to us about how WHO works with data and how can people know that they are looking at data that is robust.

SA  It has been a challenge to gather real time information on the COVID-19 infections and deaths related to the virus and associated with COVID-19. There is often a delay in countries reporting to WHO data because of lack of capacity or lag time in submitting data to WHO. But what happened with the COVID-19 pandemic is we reported excess deaths for the first two years of the pandemic and excess deaths is both the direct and the indirect deaths related to COVID-19 pandemic. 

What WHO does to produce such estimates is we work with world class experts from all over the world. We come up with a methodology that we will use when we gather data and apply that methodology to address some of the gaps and challenges that I mention that not all countries have similar access to generate and capture that data.

And then we produce these estimates, but we consult with the countries and there is a lot of back and forth that happens. And we update the estimates and we continue to track population health trends in the quest to make the world healthier and protect people from health emergencies.

VGS  So does that worry you when you work with data? When WHO’s data is questioned?

SA  It is all about finding the truth. It is like climbing a mountain. Then you keep working towards it and climb upwards - you have a better view. So where as we work with data and we gather more information from different sources, we have a better understanding and a better view. There is no absolute. When anyone says anyone is 100% accurate we truly have to be cautious. Science doesn't work that way. We have to continue to learn and continue to refine our approaches so that we get closer to the truth.

VGS  Thank you, Samira. That was Science in Five today. Until next time then, stay safe, stay healthy and stick with science.