WHO builds capacity of 4 countries in cause-of-death data collection
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is building the capacity ofhealth professionals from four countries on how to accurately collect cause-of-death statistics in health facilities as part of measures to improve healthcare delivery.
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The two-day capacity-building workshop in Accra has brought together more than 200 participants, including medical doctors, bio-statisticians, health information officers and other professionals from Ghana, Liberia, Congo Brazzaville and The Gambia
The participants will be introduced to a new module of collecting cause-of-death information consistent with international standards.
A WHO brief on the workshop stated that the new module had become necessary because most countries currently used the District Health Information Systems 2 (DHIS 2) and operationalised it to their respective country needs, leading to non-comparability of data across countries at the global level.
The DHIS 2 is a tool for the collection, validation, analysis and presentation of aggregate statistical data tailored to integrated health information management activities.
Data critical for disease surveillance
In his welcome address at the opening session, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Ebenezer Appiah Denkyira, said accurate and detailed statistics on cause of death were very critical for disease surveillance to improve healthcare delivery.
He said such statistics were also critical to public health research and forensic investigations which also improved investigations into murder cases.
He noted that despite the importance of such statistics, it had been more challenging for stakeholders to determine cause of death than diagnosing an ailment.
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Dr Denkyira was optimistic that the new WHO module would facilitate finding the cause of death to ensure that healthcare delivery was improved.
“Building the capacity of health professionals on the internationally accepted common template will improve the collection of cause-of-death data and in effect improve healthcare delivery in their respective countries,” he said.
In his remarks, the WHO Representative in Ghana, Dr Owen Laws Kaluwa, said research conducted by the world body had pitched death registration in Ghana at 23 per cent, meaning that only 23 out of every 100 deaths were registered.
“To ameliorate the poor situation, Ghana developed its civil registration and vital statistics system (CRVS) strategic plan for 2016-2020,” he said.
He said the plan was developed in line with the proposed amendment bill that was currently before Parliament to revise the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1965, (Act 301) in order to provide decentralisation of births and deaths beyond health facility to the community level.
The main objective of Ghana’s CRVS strategic plan is to ensure that by 2020, registration of deaths would have been moved from the current 23 per cent to 50 per cent and 40 per cent of the causes of death would be documented.
Mr Kaluwa was optimistic that the workshop would contribute to meeting the 2020 objective.
Email: Doreen.andoh@graphic.com.gh