It is my pleasure to present the 15th edition of the District Health Barometer (DHB) which provides information across a wide range of district health services and spans 30 indicators.
This annual publication continues to provide policy-makers, healthcare workers, planners, researchers, academics and other consumers of national health system information a unique overview of the performance of public health services in South Africa. The DHB plays an important role in providing information for district managers to benchmark their districts against others in the country and in strengthening the use of data for priority-setting and decision-making.
The main focus of the 2019/20 publication is again on the Sustainable Development Goals and the Universal Health Coverage Index as an approach to measuring equity and progress with policy implementation. The publication presents the latest burden-of-disease data, and with the unprecedented impact of COVID-19, a chapter on the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and health system responses in South Africa, with an analysis of provincial data and lessons learnt from the Western Cape.
As always, we welcome commentary and feedback on the DHB’s usefulness and suggestions for improvement of future editions.
Dr Themba L. Moeti
Chief Executive Officer
Health Systems Trust