The principal objective of the 2006 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) is to provide current and reliable data on fertility and family planning behavior, child mortality, adult and maternal mortality, children’s nutritional status, the utilization of maternal and child health services, and knowledge of HIV/AIDS. For the first time, the 2006 NDHS conducted anemia testing at the household level for the country as a whole to provide information on the prevalence of anemia at the population level. The specific objectives of the survey are to: collect data at the national level which will allow the calculation of key demographic rates; analyze the direct and indirect factors which determine the level and trends of fertility; measure the level of contraceptive knowledge and practice among women and men by method, urban-rural residence and region, collect high-quality data on family health including immunization coverage among children, prevalence and treatment of diarrhea and other diseases among children under five, and maternity care indicators including antenatal visits, assistance at delivery, and postnatal care; collect data on infant and child mortality, and maternal and adult mortality; obtain data on child feeding practices including breastfeeding, and collect anthropometric measures to use in assessing the nutritional status of women and children; collect data on knowledge and attitudes of women and men about sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS and evaluate patterns of recent behavior regarding condom use; conduct hemoglobin testing on women age 15-49 and children age 6-59 months in the households selected for the survey to provide information on the prevalence of anemia among women in the reproductive ages and young children. This information is essential for informed policy decisions, planning, monitoring, and evaluation of programs on health in general and reproductive health in particular at both the national and regional levels. A long-term objective of the survey is to strengthen the technical capacity of government organizations to plan, conduct, process, and analyze data from complex national population and health surveys. Moreover, the 2006 NDHS provides national, regional and subregional estimates on population and health that are comparable to data collected in similar surveys in other developing countries. The first Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) in Nepal was the 1996 Nepal Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted as part of the worldwide DHS program, and was followed five years later by the 2001 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS). Data from the 2006 NDHS survey, the third such survey, allow for comparison of information gathered over a longer period of time and add to the vast and growing international database on demographic and health variables. Wherever possible, the 2006 NDHS data are compared with data from the two earlier DHS surveys—the 2001 NDHS and the 1996 NFHS—which also sampled women age 15-49. Additionally, men age 15-59 were interviewed in the 2001 NDHS and the 2006 NDHS to provide comparable data for men over the last five years.
