Participants from the National Health Survey Committee and experts from the Ministry of Health and iGA at the workshop. Photo credit: WHO/WHO Bahrain8 July 2025, Isa Town, Bahrain – The World Health Organization (WHO), the Ministry of Health and the Information and eGovernment Authority (iGA) conducted a workshop at the iGA premises in Isa Town, on 22–25 June 2025, to provide hands-on training in managing National Health Survey (NHS) data to generate valid, reliable and comparable estimates of health indicators using WHO’s household survey programme World Health Survey Plus (WHS+).
By providing representative data on health indicators and the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), WHS+ allows countries to monitor their progress towards population health and health-related SDG targets.
By aligning the survey methodology with regional recommendations the workshop helped enhance the comparability of NHS data with different countries. Participants focused on mapping survey modules with regional and global tools, reviewed sampling methods to ensure that the collected data accurately represents the population, and discussed data cleaning for both household and individual responses.
The workshop was attended by NHS Committee members and experts from the Ministry of Health and iGA.
Chairperson of the NHS Committee Dr Samya Bahram meets with WHO expert Dr Eman Aly to discuss progress and updates. Photo credit: WHO/WHO BahrainCapturing quality, standardized health data enables better health planning and evidence-informed policy-making, allowing for improved use of resources. Bahrain’s last National Health Survey was in 2018, and it is currently in the process of conducting a new round of the survey.
WHO provided technical support to develop the survey proposal, adapt household and individual survey questionnaires, train iGA team members on survey modules and target indicators, refine methodologies to produce reliable data in key priority areas and review and clean data sets before the data analysis stage.
WHO Bahrain facilitated the translation of WHS+ instruments for the household and individual questionnaires into Arabic, providing an important resource for the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region.
The workshop concluded with the Assistant Undersecretary for Public Health and Chairperson of the NHS Committee Dr Samya Bahram holding a bilateral meeting with Technical Officer for Health Information and Statistics at the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean Dr Eman Aly to discuss the progress of Bahrain’s ongoing NHS.