Civil Registration
Civil Registration: BACKGROUND
Civil registration is a routine, permanent, nationally mandated data source that captures vital life events (namely live births, deaths, foetal deaths, marriages and divorces). It provides legal documentation of such events and is the ideal source for vital statistics. However, even in contexts where civil registration is complete, underreporting and misclassification of maternal deaths is a frequent challenge. Civil registration can also be done on a sample basis, identifying deaths either actively or passively - Sample Vital Registration or SAVVY (Sample vital registration with verbal autopsy).
Identification of death
Family member and/or facility notify deaths to civil registration system at time they occur (actively).
Ascertainment of maternal/pregnancy related status:
Advantages:
- serves multiple purposes and is representative of entire population
- on-going system that therefore does not require special data collection activities
- provides annual estimates of maternal mortality, regional differentials
- provide cause-specific estimates of maternal mortality
- provides data on births
- ideal for monitoring trends
Limitations:
- susceptible to poor quality - underreporting of deaths, incorrect cause of death attribution (leading to misclassification of maternal deaths), untimely/late reporting of deaths and births
- coverage may not be complete (routinely reported in only 78 countries/areas or 35% of world population)
- rarely provides socio-economic data on determinants of maternal death
Measurement requirements:
- sub-causes need to be grouped as maternal deaths (see: ICD Coding)
- under-reporting of deaths needs to be assessed/adjusted using demographic techniques - see: Bennett-Horiuchi Method, Chandrasekaran-Deming, and Growth Balance
- quality of cause-of-death certification and coding needs assessment
- maternal death ascertainment can be corrected using Capture Recapture (Dual method)
- data on births are also needed (and may need to be corrected) to calculate the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) and Total Fertility Rate (TFR)
- data on the population of women aged 15-49 are needed to calculate the Maternal Mortality Rate (MMRate)
Civil Registration Forms
Sample Death Form:
Sample Birth Certificate Form:
Also see:
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Civil Registration: GUIDELINES
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UN (2001) Principles and recommendations for a vital statistics system. Revision 2. Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Statistics Division. New York: United Nations. ST/ESA/STAT/SER.M/19/Rev.2 |
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Civil Regsitration: REFERENCES
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Deneux-Tharaux, C, Berg, C, Bouvier-Colle, MH; Gissler, M; Harper, M; Nannini, A; Alexander, S; Wildman, K; Breart, G; Buekens, P (2005) Underreporting of pregnancy-related mortality in the United States and Europe. Obstetrics & Gynecology. 106(4):684-92. |
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Songane FF, Bergström S (2002) Quality of registration of maternal deaths in Mozambique: a community-based study in rural and urban areas. Social Science and Medicine, 54(1): 23-31. |
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Sombie, I.; Meda, N.; Hounton, S.; Bambara, M.; Ouedraogo, T.W.; Graham, W. (2007) Missing maternal deaths: lessons from Souro Sanou University Hospital in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. Tropical Doctor, 37(2): 96-8. |
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Civil Registration: ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
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