South-East Asian health ministers and policymakers, now in Dhaka for the World Health Organisation South-East Asian region committee meeting, are pondering the most effective ways to record birth and death information.
Top health officials from the 11 member states of the WHO’s South-East Asia region were looking into effective civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems at the 67th session of the regional committee yesterday.
According to the WHO, globally some 7.6 million children under the age of 5 died in 2010, but less than 2.7% of those deaths were medically certified, assigned a cause of death by a health worker, or recorded in an official database.
A lack of reliable data is a major obstacle to effective health planning and management.
Health experts at the meeting said civil registration – the public recording of key life events, such as births, deaths, causes of death, and marriages – and vital statistics – the data that comes from such records – are essential for evaluating health needs and designing effective policies.
The best way for countries to ensure that this data is consistently and continuously recorded is through a national CRVS system—governed by legal mandate and run by the national government with a network of key stakeholders, including government agencies, the national statistics office, the police department and the health sector, the WHO said in a press release yesterday.
“We must make every life count by recording every birth and death. When each birth is not counted, then the denominator for nearly all health indicators is incorrect. CRVS systems are the only way to obtain continuous, compulsory, and cost effective data on births, deaths, and cause of death,” said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director for WHO South-East Asia region.
“A strong and reliable CRVS system is an essential tool for national planning across multiple sectors, especially in the health sector,” she said.
It is key to achieving time-bound health targets, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Reliable vital statistics from civil registration systems can provide essential input to 42 of the 60 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) indicators and help countries to achieve their 2015 goals, according to the WHO press release.
WHO and the World Bank, with input from several agencies and countries, have developed the Global CRVS Scaling Up Investment Plan 2015-2024, with the goal of universal civil registration and access to legal proof of registration for all individuals.
To achieve this goal, the WHO South-East Asia region has developed the “Regional Strategy to Strengthen the Role of the Health Sector in Improving CRVS Systems”, which is expected to be endorsed by the regional committee.
Given the multi-sectoral nature of CRVS systems, the regional strategy is a multi-dimensional approach, with focus on such key strategic areas as strengthening the organisational framework of CRVS systems, reinforcing inter-sectoral collaboration, and employing the help of community health workers to boost the completeness of the already existing registries.
While in general, civil registration of births and deaths is conducted to some degree in all countries of the region, greater effort is needed to ensure the completeness of these registers, with particular emphasis on including accurate causes of death. The WHO South-East Asia region with its 11 member states has considerable diversity in terms of population size, geographical distribution, and socio-economic status.
The regional strategy articulates common principles in the development of a CRVS systems, but countries will need to develop country-specific national plans based on their particular needs.
“The improvement of CVRS systems is imperative for sustainable and inclusive development, particularly in the global post-2015 development agenda. It will be central to monitoring the achievement of universal health coverage,” said Singh.
