The case for developing publicly-accessible datasets for health services research in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region

Table 1 An overview of dataset availability in the MENA region

	MENA Countries	Human Resources in Health	Health Data	Quality	Health System and facilities	Financial Statistics	Middle East Cancer Consortium^¥	Middle East IVF Registry^£
1	Afghanistan	✓	✓	✓
2	Bahrain	✓	✓		✓	✓		✓
3	Cyprus		✓				✓
4	Djibouti ^(F)	✓
5	Egypt	✓	✓				✓	✓
6	Iran	✓	✓	✓
7	Iraq	✓	✓
8	Jordan	✓	✓				✓	✓
9	Kuwait	✓	✓
10	Lebanon	✓	✓			✓		✓
11	Libya	✓	✓
12	Morocco ^(F)	✓	✓
13	Oman	✓	✓
14	Palestine*	✓	✓		✓		✓
15	Pakistan	✓	✓
16	Qatar	✓	✓		✓
17	Saudi Arabia	✓	✓					✓
18	Somalia	✓	✓		✓
19	Sudan	✓	✓		✓
20	Syria	✓	✓
21	Tunisia ^(F)	✓	✓					✓
22	United Arab Emirates	✓	✓					✓
23	Western Sahara**		✓
24	Yemen	✓	✓		✓

* Referred to as West Bank and Gaza on some international websites; This is the only MENA country with publicly accessible databases (through the (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics)
** This is a conflict country
¥ Lebanon is not a member of this consortium, probably since Israel is also a member: http://mecc.cancer.gov/registry.html. They have an 82-page "Manual of standards for Cancer Registration" available on: http://mecc.cancer.gov/MECC_Manual_of_Standards.PDF They also have a link to all publications from the registry on: http://mecc.cancer.gov/publications.html;
£ No website was found for the In-Vitro Fertilization registry. A report by Ragaa Mansour about the IVF registry was documented

ISSN: 1472-6963