Aims of the study: This study wants to examine the availability of Belgian healthcare data in the three main\r\ninternational health databases: the World Health Organization European Health for All Database (WHO-HFA), the\r\nOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Health Data 2009 and EUROSTAT.\r\nMethods: For the indicators present in the three databases, the availability of Belgian data and the source of these\r\ndata were checked.\r\nMain findings: The most important problem concerning the availability of Belgian health-related data in the three\r\nmajor international databases is the lack of recent data. Recent data are available for 27% of the indicators of the\r\nWHO-HFA database, 73% of the OECD Health Data, and for half of the Eurostat indicators. Especially recent data\r\nabout health status (including mortality-based indicators) are lacking.\r\nDiscussion: Only the availability of the health-related data is studied in this article. The quality of the Belgian data\r\nis however also important to examine.\r\nThe main problem concerning the availability of health data is the timeliness. One of the causes of this lack of\r\n(especially mortality) data is the reform of the Belgian State. Nowadays mortality data are provided by the\r\ncommunities. This results in a delay in the delivery of national mortality data. However several efforts are made to\r\ncatch up.
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