This supplement by the INDEPTH NCD Surveillance in Asia Working Group, demonstrates the increasing ability of the INDEPTH Network to harness the collective potential in Health and Demographic Surveillance System sites in low and middle-income countries to provide a better, empirical understanding of health issues of populations under continuous evaluation.
With modest INDEPTH support to our colleagues in Asia, they have worked relentlessly to show it can be done; scientists from different countries and institutions have worked together and have looked at a topical research issue – chronic non-communicable disease surveillance in Asia.
With this collaborative research, we have seen some of the objectives of INDEPTH being achieved: we have strengthened the capability of several of our young scientists to conduct and analyse longitudinal health and demographic studies; and some of them have become first authors of scientific papers for the first time.
I wish to recognise the vision of my predecessor Professor Fred Binka who risked core funds to support the NCD Surveillance group in Asia. I am sure he will be delighted to read this collection of papers from our young scientists.
The authors need to be applauded for this excellent work and I wish to thank all the facilitators who have made these papers possible. I hope that the strong body of scientific research and evidence provided will attract further resources for more INDEPTH research in Asia.
On behalf of the INDEPTH Board and myself, I wish to thank the following funders whose resources were used by the Secretariat to support the NCD Surveillance group for their work, including a series of scientific writing workshops, and for sponsoring this supplement: Wellcome Trust, Sida/GLOBFORSK, Rockefeller Foundation, Gates Foundation and Hewlett Foundation.
Finally, I recognise with gratitude the novel mentorship programme of this journal. Ruth Bonita mentored the young scientists and supported them in reaching a successful completion of these papers.
I sincerely hope that the findings of these studies will generate future work or programmes in NCD risk factor surveillance in Asia.
Osman Sankoh, Executive Director, INDEPTH Network