Washington, DC, September 28, 2017 (PAHO / WHO) -  Health authorities of the Americas today agreed on an action plan to strengthen vital statistics systems of the population of each country, during the 29th Pan American Sanitary Conference being held this week in Washington, DC.

Improving birth and death records is essential for making decisions on public health resource allocation, policymaking and health interventions, according to the new Regional Plan of Action for Strengthening Vital and Health Statistics approved today.

The plan aims to achieve universal registration of births and deaths, including better quality registration of causes of death, providing information to improve public health policies and planning.

In the Americas, there were an estimated 15 million births in 2016, but 3.2 million newborns were not registered with birth certificates. That year, there were about 6.8 million deaths, but 5.8% (approximately, 400,000 deaths) were not recorded.

Civil registration is a human right, provides identity, and facilitates access to such essential services as health, education, and social benefits, the plan notes. But countries face challenges, including the low coverage and quality of birth and death registration for populations in conditions of vulnerability.

Death registration is also important in epidemiology, so health systems can know exact causes of death and adjust interventions to reduce avoidable deaths.

Collecting such data, however, offers challenges at the national level, such as the lack of coordination mechanisms and regulatory frameworks that help link reporting of vital health unit events with civil registry offices and statistical institutes. Funding and investment is needed to sustain health information systems and vital statistics, the plan notes.

The plan's aims are to help countries develop better ways to monitor and evaluate the quality, coverage, and timeliness of their vital and health statistics, using good practices and lessons learned. 

The plan includes four strategies to achieve this objective:  Strengthen systems for vital statistics; modernize the processes of vital statistics with the support of information and communication technologies; strengthen the capacity of staff responsible for managing, producing and analyzing vital statistics data so that it can extract information more efficiently; and strengthen the exchange of good practices related to vital statistics between countries.

This plan responds to the needs identified by Member States in 2016, when the situation in the previous eight years was analyzed and they noted that increased efforts are required to improve the quality of certification and codification of causes of death, so countries have better information on the causes of disease and death in their population. 

Links

Action Plan for the Strengthening of Vital Statistics 2017-2022