Note: [1] J.T.P. Bonte read social sciences at the universities of Gent and Leuven, Belgium. Before joining The Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics in 1971, he worked on the staff of the Netherlands Institute for Preventive Medicine in Leiden and the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam, in which capacity he was seconded to the Ministry of Health in Kenya. His main fields of professional activities and responsibilities are health statistics, epidemiology and medical demography. With respect to health statistics in particular he has worked on many occasions on international assignments. He is a member of WHO's Expert Panel on Health Situation and Trend Assessment.
Note: [2] P. van Son read sociology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. As staff collaborator of the Directorate for Epidemiology and Informatics of the Ministry of Welfare, Health and Cultural Affairs in The Netherlands, he is active in the field of health services research and medical sociology. He was recently charged with the development of systematic policy evaluation from epidemiological and statistical perspectives. He serves as liaison officer between the General Directorate of Public Health and the Central Bureau of Statistics.
Abstract: In The Netherlands the use of statistical data for health management, planning and evaluation has increased manifold since the early seventies. Changes in public health policy were a strong impetus for this development. The development of health statistics takes place with regard to a description of the status of health of the population, of health resources, and of provided health services. A quantitative description of each category and sub-category of the system is necessary, but what is more important is that health statistics contribute to the required insight in the relation between health resources, health services rendered and the way in which services meet their demand. New legislation leads to the revision of the organization of data collection, transmission, analysis, etc. The WHO strategy “Health for All by the Year 2000” and national scenario studies also provide stimuli for the further development of health statistics.
