Monitoring country progress and achievements by making global predictions: is the tail wagging the dog?

Academic journals, notably The Lancet, also published model-based estimates of the achievements of countries on maternal and child mortality.4,5 The monitoring of country progress towards the 169 targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) appears to follow the tracks of the MDGs, with annual reports based on predicted (forecasted) statistics for a very recent year.6–8 The monitoring is expanding further to include estimate-based composite measures or indices that summarise the values of a range of health and other indicators, and is likely to be extended beyond national estimates given the emphasis on disaggregated statistics for SDGs. [...]global publications and academic journals should be increasingly circumspect and transparent regarding the limitations of estimates; publications should pay increased attention to empirical country data presented with careful data quality ascertainment and adjustments for biases on the basis of transparent and reproducible methods. [...]donors and global development partners should reconsider their role in the production and use of global estimates. [...]persistent data gaps need to be reduced by strengthening data sources such as birth and death registration systems, as has been articulated in many fora.18 Contributors TB wrote the first draft and all authors contributed to the revisions of the manuscript and approved the final version.