The 67th session of the WHO’s Regional Committee for South-East Asia concluded yesterday with participating health ministers adopting resolutions to accelerate health action on key areas.
The committee endorsed the Regional strategy for strengthening the role of the health sector in Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS). It also recognised the need for strengthening CRVS and health information systems to ensure evidence-based decision-making.
The Committee noted that reliable data is essential for effective health planning and management and that CRVS systems are crucial to obtain continuous, compulsory and cost-effective data on births, deaths and causes of death.
The committee urged member states to implement the regional strategy, to assess the national CRVS systems, and to support national capacity building.
Countries were urged to build national capacity to strengthen CRVS, to boost completeness of birth and death registration including supporting the use of verbal autopsy to record community deaths, to strengthen death certification by trained healthcare workers, and also to strengthen implementation of ICD coding and generate quality mortality statistics from CRVS data.
The committee also adopted a resolution on traditional medicine (TM), recognising that traditional medicine and its practitioners have substantial potential to contribute to improving health outcomes in member states.
The committee also endorsed the Regional Action plan to implement global strategy to reduce harmful use of alcohol (2014-2025). It said it was concerned about the increase in alcohol consumption in countries of the Region, particularly among adolescents, youth and women and a high prevalence of heavy or binge drinking.
The WHO was requested to provide technical support to member states for knowledge-sharing platforms encompassing a repository of tools; and to harmonise technical and financial support from different international agencies and partners to assist member states in implementing the standard verbal autopsy tools.
WHO was also requested to provide technical support and build capacity of member states to advance implementation of the regional plan and to support capacity strengthening and international collaboration mechanisms that include setting up of the Regional Technical Advisory Group on Alcohol and Health.
The committee endorsed the regional strategy on strengthening health workforce education and training in the South-East Asia Region (2014-2019). Participants were concerned about the critical shortage of health workers which is a problem particularly in rural and remote areas.