Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative
Vital Strategies Monthly Update: May 2024
I) Accomplishments
Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Cameroon – The routine production of high-quality vital statistics remains one of
the critical weaknesses in Cameroon’s CRVS system. In 2023, during Phase 4 of the Data for Health Initiative, Cameroon’s first report on vital statistics for the years 2018- 2022 was produced under the leadership of the National Institute of Statistics (NIS). From this report, it was clear that problems of completeness, availability, and accuracy of civil registration data were still persistent and prevented the production of a vital statistics report that complies with international standards in the field.
In the past, the collection of CRVS data in Cameroon included copying all relevant data from all the civil registers used by the civil registry centers at the end of the year and forwarding it to the National Bureau of Civil Status (BUNEC) for archiving, as stipulated by the law governing civil status in Cameroon. BUNEC is also the government body in charge of regulating civil status. This method for collecting CRVS data was ineffective; often, copies of the registers used by the civil registry centers were not systematically transmitted to BUNEC each year, creating issues in data completeness and preventing any reliable vital statistics from being produced.
To address this, institutional partners met to agree and develop a system to harmonize the collection of vital statistics data to facilitate the production of Cameroon’s vital statistics report. Participants included BUNEC, NIS, Ministry of Health, UNICEF, GIZ, Vital Strategies, and others.
In early 2024, BUNEC implemented a new digital system for collecting and reporting harmonized civil status statistics from civil status centers to the national level. The new system is currently being piloted in 8 out of 10 regions nationwide, with the aim of eventually rolling it out in all regions across the country. The system collects vital statistics from civil registry centers monthly. Vital Strategies provided technical assistance for the development of the data collection form and for the development of the Kobo Collect tool, as well as supported the training of civil registrars and BUNEC staff in the use of these new tools.
To date, the implementation of the new vital statistics collection system has made it possible to obtain 2023 statistics on births, marriages, and deaths from 79% of communes (297) enrolled in this pilot phase. Of the 3,564 monthly forms for collecting vital statistics expected from these pilot communes for 2023, 2,148 forms were transmitted and entered into the system, representing a completeness rate of 60 percent. Based on these results, the next steps will be to monitor the activities of the civil registry centers to ensure that the standards are embedded to guarantee the accuracy,
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