The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) has launched the Birth De­fects Repos­i­to­ry in the Amer­i­c­as, an in­ter­ac­tive plat­form that con­sol­i­dates re­al-time da­ta on con­gen­i­tal anom­alies re­port­ed by na­tion­al epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance sys­tems in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

PA­HO said on Wednes­day that the tool aims to “strength­en ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of poli­cies and strate­gies to im­prove ma­ter­nal and child health.”

PA­HO said each year, about 15 mil­lion chil­dren are born in the Re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as, with 10 mil­lion of them in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

It said more than half of all deaths among chil­dren un­der five oc­cur dur­ing the first month of life, main­ly due to pre­ma­tu­ri­ty, birth de­fects, sep­sis, or as­phyx­ia.

PA­HO said con­gen­i­tal anom­alies are among the lead­ing caus­es of neona­tal mor­tal­i­ty and child­hood dis­abil­i­ty, af­fect­ing thou­sands of fam­i­lies.

The health body not­ed these con­di­tions are as­so­ci­at­ed with ge­net­ic and hered­i­tary fac­tors, chro­mo­so­mal ab­nor­mal­i­ties, en­vi­ron­men­tal ex­po­sures, nu­tri­tion­al de­fi­cien­cies, tox­ic sub­stances, or chron­ic and in­fec­tious dis­eases dur­ing preg­nan­cy.

“The Zi­ka virus emer­gency in 2016 (which can be trans­mit­ted from moth­er to child), and re­cent ev­i­dence of ver­ti­cal trans­mis­sion of the Oropouche virus have un­der­scored the ur­gent need for time­ly and com­pa­ra­ble da­ta to pre­vent and ad­dress these anom­alies,” said James Fitzger­ald, di­rec­tor of PA­HO’s De­part­ment of Health Sys­tems and Ser­vices.

To ad­dress this chal­lenge, PA­HO said the repos­i­to­ry of­fers in­ter­ac­tive dash­boards dis­play­ing trends, ge­o­graph­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion, and de­mo­graph­ic pat­terns of birth de­fects, sup­port­ing the de­sign of pre­ven­tion strate­gies and health in­ter­ven­tions.

Al­though the plat­form cur­rent­ly presents pre­lim­i­nary da­ta from a few coun­tries, PA­HO said its cov­er­age will ex­pand as more na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties con­tribute their records, with tech­ni­cal sup­port from PA­HO.

PA­HO said cur­rent­ly, coun­tries in the Re­gion have na­tion­al birth de­fect sur­veil­lance pro­grams at var­i­ous stages of de­vel­op­ment.

Dur­ing the vir­tu­al launch sem­i­nar of the new tool, PA­HO said four coun­tries — Ar­genti­na, Brazil, Cos­ta Ri­ca and Cu­ba — shared their ex­pe­ri­ences, as well as key chal­lenges in im­ple­ment­ing these sys­tems.

Joint­ly de­vel­oped by PA­HO’s De­part­ments of Health Sys­tems and Ser­vices and Ev­i­dence and In­tel­li­gence for Ac­tion in Health, PA­HO said this ini­tia­tive reaf­firms its com­mit­ment to more in­clu­sive and ef­fec­tive health sys­tems.

“By iden­ti­fy­ing dis­par­i­ties in sur­veil­lance,” PA­HO said, “the repos­i­to­ry al­so pro­motes health eq­ui­ty.”

PA­HO urged coun­tries across the Re­gion to join this col­lab­o­ra­tive plat­form, “strength­en­ing epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance and ad­vanc­ing to­ward a fu­ture where every child has the op­por­tu­ni­ty for a healthy start in life.” —WASH­ING­TON (CMC)