For the proper functioning of health systems, countries must know how many citizens are born and dead each year as well as the main grounds of the deaths. Keep a record of all people and to track all the deaths and births is made by civil registration. The civil registration is the basis of personal legal identity, and as well it lets countries to define their most dangerous health problems.
The WHO receives solid, high quality statistical data on causes of death only from 31 of the 193 Member Countries. Throughout in the world are not recorded 2/3 (38 million) of the 57 million deaths every year and about 40% (48 million) of the 128 million births.
When deaths remain uncounted and causes not documented, government can not design effective nation health policies and count their impact. The civil registration exists in all developed and developing countries. Data on deaths and births by sex, age and ground is the keystone of nation’s health planning.
Civil records – is the mean of a complete and continuous birth and death records of the countries, and the marital state of its citizens.
For such health agencies like the WHO, vital registration system is the most reliable source of births and deaths statistics and grounds of death.
The countries, in which there is no properly functioning system of civil registration, are only a rough idea about the size, longevity and health of its population.
Civil registration has numerous advantages. The human right to register the beginning and end of life is essential to national inclusion. With the insurance or inheritance absence, registration of death and death certificates are often needed prerequisites for burial, re-marriage, or sentencing in criminal cases.
With the civil registration some risks are associated. The data it provides can be exploited to discriminate certain groups. Though, there are methods to work out systems reducing these risks.
Many bounds prevent citizens from registering deaths and births. For instance, many states don’t have the needed infrastructure or laws to make registering deaths and births obligatory. In several countries, civil registration is only available to urban residents.
To set well-functioning vital registration system takes years, but there are temporary measures which countries can apply to get information.
Surveys and censuses can be applied to count population, but they don’t provide information about grounds of death. In the absence of complete vital registration, you can use a custom registration, which includes tracking a narrow population part. Such a system exists in India and China.
To improve comparability of grounds of death, from systems without medical death certification, it is recommended to use standard questionnaires WHO verbal autopsy (clarifying the circumstances of death by interviewing people close deceased).
The evolution of church registries for vital record systems in countries like the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and France, took more than three centuries. International norms and principles for the establishment of civil record systems have been designed by agencies of the United Nations. As the experience of Jordan, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and South Africa, a functional system can be created for several decades.
