By Kemo Cham
Registration of the dead is important for the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Statistician General Prof. Osman Sankoh has said.
Prof. Sankoh told the just concluded conference on civil registration in Freetown that measuring progress towards the SDG targets has been difficult and that it will continue that way unless everyone makes greater efforts to collect information on the number of annual deaths that occur among the population and the causes of those deaths.
The conference was convened by the national Civil Registration Authority (NCRA) in commemoration of the Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Day.
The occasion on Sunday August 9 coincided with the launch of the NCRA’s CRVS and ID Management Strategic Plan 2019-2024. It also marked the launch of the CRVS Country Assessment Report.
The CRVS Day has been commemorated on 10 August every year since it was declared in December 2017 by the Conference of African Ministers responsible for CRVS, with the goal of promoting continuous, compulsory, permanent and universal recording of births, deaths, adoptions, legitimation, marriages, nullities and the issuance of ID cards.
The theme for this year's commemoration is: ‘Birth Certificates for all: Fundamental for Protecting Human Rights and Promoting Inclusion.’
Despite challenges in registration of births, Sierra Leone has made tremendous progress in the last few years, with support from donors like the UN agencies to improve in mobility, a major factor contributing to the lack of access to birth certificates especially in remote parts of the country.
But the country lags far behind in terms of death registration. And Prof. Sankoh said the trend is global on the African country. Citing statistics from the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the Statistician General said only one in three deaths in Africa is captured by official registration systems, and that only 18 of the 54 countries on the continent record and reports on deaths annually.
The ECA figures also show that only four African countries have a level of death registration coverage and cause of death information that meets international standards, Sankoh said.
“Sierra Leone is not yet among these four countries, but with the determined efforts of our National Registration Authority, I am confident that it will not take us long to get there,” he stated.
The Statistician General also noted the role citizens can play to eliminate the perennial complaints against internationally sourced data for local consumption. He said many a time Sierra Leoneans would question the UNDP Human Development Index, for instance, which places the country at the bottom of the Human Development ladder, yet they fail to question their own lack of action to generate the data that are required for the global comparisons.
Besides measurement of progress towards national and international commitments, Sankoh said information provided by civil registration is vital for effective policy development, notably in the health sector where accurate data is needed to quantify disease burden and allocation of resources to priority public health issues.
“By helping to quantify the burden of disease, mortality data ensures that healthcare resources are allocated to the most pressing priorities. Once those resources are allocated, the data assists in assessing effectiveness - and cost-effectiveness – of interventions,” he said.
Over the years a number of African countries have taken to legislating on registration, in line with commitments to international agreements. The NCRA, which was established in 2016, is a result of such international commitments. The Act that established the Authority makes registration of births, deaths and adoptions, among others, compulsory for citizens and non-citizens living in the country.
But like many other countries, enforcement of the law in Sierra Leone is yet to be seen, hence the low level of data generation in this respect.
Sankoh said to turn the tide will require increased political will, as well as capacity building for policy makers and other relevant officials in use of mortality data.
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