World Health Organization (WHO) is the organization directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.
World Health Organization (WHO) launched a survey initiative in 2000, to collect complete information on the health population. Timely and reliable information help decision makers to improve the health of the populations. Strengthening the ability to supervise critical health outputs and outcomes through the fielding of a valid, reliable, and comparable household survey instrument was the prime aim of the survey. As part of the survey, WHO launched Multi-Country Survey Study (MCSS) in 2000-2001 in 61 countries. Methods used for data collection were face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews and postal surveys. The data were collected from 61 countries across the world.
In 2002-2003, World Health Survey (WHS) was launched. It was designed to address the issue of cross-population. Seventy countries participated in the survey. A sub-set of these surveys was completed in 2004.
