Strengthening civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems
The Cambodia Ministry of Interior, National Statistics Office, and Ministry of Health are steering actions in civil registration and cause of death (COD) certification by undergoing a comprehensive assessment and planning process for improving their civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system. Carefully integrating medically certified deaths occurring in health facilities with those occurring and registered within communities is the only way to fully understand what people are dying from. In the Kandal Province in Cambodia, for example, they record births and deaths and produce certificates and monitor and report vital events monthly. Improving the completeness, quality, and use of mortality data is a key next step.
Underlying cause of death (COD) medically certified and coded using ICD-10 is standardizing the way mortality statistics are derived from facility-based systems and communities, including the use of verbal autopsy (VA), to increase coverage of medically-certified deaths and CODs registered. Several Member States have been trained and are implementing ICD-10 with the support of WPRO include Cambodia, Lao PDR, Philippines, Mongolia, and Fiji.
More than 20 Member States in the region have completed rapid assessments of their CRVS systems within the past two years through consultations with Ministries of Health, National Statistics Offices, and Civil Registrars using tools developed by WHO and the University of Queensland (UQ). Two consortium of partners are working collaboratively now to conduct comprehensive CRVS assessments using the even more detailed and sophisticated WHO-UQ tools and initiate long-term implementation plans in the Pacific (WPRO, SPC, UQ, UNICEF, UNFPA, Pacific Health Information Network, others) and in Asia (WPRO, UN ESCAP, SEARO, HMN, UQ, ADB, Plan International, UNICEF, UNFPA, AeHIN, others). These efforts are aligned with the work of the Commission on Information and Accountability (CoIA) for Women's and Children's Health, which prioritises CRVS strengthening in priority countries. A high-level meeting is scheduled for 10-11 December 2012 in Bangkok to increase multi-sectoral engagement, political will, leadership, coordination, and advocacy for improving CRVS systems in 57 countries in Asia and the Pacific—including all countries in the WPR.
