Ghana initiates project to enhance community-based registration system

March 11, 2011
Accra, March 11, GNA - Ghana has initiated a pilot project to enhance Community-based vital registration to develop, assess and implement alternative methods for producing and interpreting measurements of under-five mortality in the Northern Region.

The effort is being undertaken in the context of increased support for achievement of the Millennium Development Goal four (MDG-4) and measuring the resulting changes and lessons in mortality among children less than five years of age.

Addressing a meeting in Accra, Dr Daniel Arhinful, Head of the Epidemiology Department of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), said the initiative was also to assess the effect of increased development aid from donors.

He stated that most poor countries, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, lacked valid and reliable vital statistics that were critical for national planning, policy decisions and budgeting among other things.

He said concern for this had therefore led to renewed efforts by the international community to strengthen weak vital registration systems to reflect increasing recognition of the human right for individuals to be counted, as well as the need for stronger data for decision making.

Dr Arhinful explained that to ensure these, the Health Metrics Network (HMN) under the World Health Organisation, was coordinating an initiative known as Monitoring Vital Events with Information Technology (MoVE-IT), which focuses on innovation to strengthen the monitoring of civil registration systems in the country.

He explained that with support from the HMN MoVE-IT initiative, the NMIMR, the Institute for International Programmes at the Johns Hopkins University (IIP-JHU) and the Births and Deaths Registry Plus (BDR+) approach using existing community-based volunteer structures and new technologies had been adopted.

This approach to expand vital registration in rural communities had been would facilitate quality outcomes.

Dr Arhinful said an evaluation of the approach would assess the feasibility, effectiveness and financial cost of community-based reporting of vital statistics on pregnancies, births and neonatal and under-five deaths.

He said in order to expand effective coverage of vital registration systems to rural areas, the BDR had trained community-based volunteers (CBVs) in pilot sites to record events in a community population register to help improve reporting of births and deaths in such areas.

Dr Arhinful explained that the initiative was aimed at catalysing partners to build on existing programmes, harnessing innovation, generating evidence and disseminating results with emphasis on the introduction of new technologies to improve vital events monitoring and registration.

Dr Andrew Seidu-Korkor, Programme Manager, Guinea Worm Eradication Programme (GWEP), on Community-based Surveillance reporting on births and deaths in Ghana, said they normally used Community-based Health Assistants who were mostly volunteers.

He said currently there were about 30,000 volunteers nationwide, but there were about 5,000 in the Northern Region who were the credible source of disease surveillance in the various communities and reported warnings of disease outbreaks.

Dr Seidu-Korkor said the CBS volunteers reported about 45,000 births and 5,000 deaths in 2010 from the Districts.

He, however, said lack of volunteers in "oversees areas" and high illiteracy among certain deprived communities posed major setbacks to the programme.

Dr Seidu-Korkor, however, called for the adoption of a generic name such as "Community Health Volunteers," so that they would be motivated to avail themselves of all forms of assistance that may be required of them and further align them with all National Surveillance Sub-district and CHPS Programmes.

He also stressed on the importance of using existing tools, but should consider illiteracy when developing programmes.

Dr Mark Amexo, Representative of the HMN in Geneva, stated that a new approach towards information gathering was critical to enhance civil registration systems in Ghana.

He indicated that application of the MoVE-IT programme therefore offered greater opportunity in collecting, monitoring and management of timely and evidence-based data.

Mr Andrews Lamptey, Head of Vital Statistics of the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), said vital statistics were important in national planning.

He stated that in Ghana a number of organisations were involved in registering vital events. However, the system had numerous challenges resulting in incomplete or patchy registration and untimely delivery of data from the Regions and Districts.

He mentioned challenges such as limited human and financial resources for the BDR, saying though the GSS and the Ministry of Health worked with statistics in their programme planning and monitoring, they did not have up-to-date vital statistics at the lower levels.

He suggested the strengthening of collaboration and reporting mechanisms between the BDR and Civil Registries (CRs) Organisations such as the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies and to strengthen their capacities to perform efficiently.

Mr Lamptey also called for the establishment of a National Technical Advisory Committee on CRs to monitor their activities.

Mr Issac Adams, Director of Research, Statistics and Information Management, Ministry of Health, re-echoed the need for data planning.

He noted that limitations of under registration led to biases in national planning.

He stressed on the critical role of technology in data gathering and processing, but cautioned on their use for security reasons.

GNA