In 2010, the World Health Assembly passed a resolution calling upon countries to prevent birth defects where possible. Though birth defects surveillance programs are an important source of information to guide implementation and evaluation of preventive interventions, many countries that shoulder the largest burden of birth defects do not have surveillance programs.
This paper shares the results of a hospital-based birth defects surveillance program in Uganda which, can be adopted by similar resource-limited countries.
Authors conclude that A hospital-based surveillance project with active case ascertainment can generate reliable epidemiologic data about birth defects prevalence and can inform prevention policies and service provision needs in low and middleincome countries.