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| New drive to encourage civil registration: UN | |
| 2007-10-29 | |
Civil registration is the way by which countries keep track of births, deaths and marital status of their people. These systems are the best way to produce vital statistics – counts of births and deaths and causes of death. Such statistics are needed to show whether health programmes are working. They are also essential to assess whether development aid is well spent. The lack of civil registration systems means that every year, almost 40% (48 million) of 128 million births worldwide go unregistered. The situation is even worse for death registration. Globally, two-thirds (38 million) of 57 million deaths a year are not registered. WHO receives reliable cause-of-death statistics from only 31 of its 193 Member States. The absence of civil registration has other implications. When children's births are not registered they are less likely to benefit from basic human rights – social, political, civic or economic. At the other end of the lifespan, when deaths go uncounted and causes of death are not documented, governments are unable to design effective health policies, measure their impact or know whether health budgets are being spent well. "No single UN agency is responsible for ensuring that births and deaths are registered, so it has fallen between the cracks. That is why we have failed to establish, support, and sustain civil registration systems over the past 30 years in the developing world," WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan said today at the Global Forum for Health Research in Beijing. "Without the statistics that these systems produce, we can only have a partial view of the impact of US$ 120 billion spent annually in official development aid." The drive to encourage countries to improve civil registration is launched today with a series of papers published in the The drive marks the start of intensive work to help six countries most in need to improve civil registration. The Health Metrics Network has already started working with Cambodia, Sierra Leone and Syria. By the end of the year, three other countries will have been identified for assistance. "The lack of civil registration systems has been partially compensated by surveys, sample registration and surveillance sites," says Dr Sally Stansfield, Executive Secretary of the Health Metrics Network. "These provide some useful information, but they give an incomplete picture of population size and needs. And they certainly cannot give individuals the basic human right to a legal identity that comes from civil registration. It’s a major challenge to build civil registration systems: this is the job no one wants." As part of this drive, the Health Metrics Network is releasing today a Monitoring vital events resource kit CD-ROM. This kit contains the tools and reference texts that countries can use to guide them in their work towards full civil registration. | |
| Posted by:Seafarious |
| #4 So these developing countries can beg dollars from the US when they show their high birth and death rates. It's all about the money... |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2007-10-29 19:19 |
| #3 So what do they really want it for? |
| Posted by: Icerigger 2007-10-29 16:24 |
| #2 The Health Metrics Network launches a drive today to encourage countries to count all births and deaths through civil registration. And remember El Jefe, if you can count it or measure it, you can tax it! |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-10-29 09:16 |
| #1 Not ironically, the value of the individual is only held in high regard in those nations who record births and deaths. And while we assume both that the rest of the world has these standards, and that having the ability to create statistics is important, it could be enlightening to point out that neither really matters. In a manner of speaking, some wit once pointed out that there are few ordinary reasons to count over a million except for money. Every 100 years - all new people. The recording of information about individuals is mostly interesting to only trivia experts, genealogists and those who think it gives them some degree of control over their own people. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-10-29 00:12 |