By Millicent Senava Mannah
The National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA) in partnership with Countrywide Mortality Surveillance for Action (COMSA) has launched a six months’ project on the management of data of births and deaths registration through technology. This meeting involved NCRA management staff, journalists and other stakeholders and took place on 19th April, 2023, at the Occasions Hotel, Lakka, Western Rural Area in Freetown.
Speaking at the launch, the NCRA Director General, Mohamed Massaquoi, intimated that, they are partnering with the COMSA to improve on births and deaths registration in the country, adding that before now, the registration of births and deaths across the country was haywire and uncontrolled and not monitored which is not good for the development of any country.
He added that the pilot project had been concluded in two districts: Western Urban District and Bo District. He went on to say that the project has been on for about two years now and that it is more of a research for the NCRA to learn how to go about the eventual and practical final phase of this project.
He maintained that the engagement is for NCRA staff to have a proper understanding about the project, and to plan the format of the project implementation and the details regarding budgeting for specific activities amongst others.
He said, many projects fail sometimes because beneficiaries do not have an understanding about what the project is about, and therefore, they cannot own it and it is also difficult to implement the project.
The DG noted that, NCRA and COMSA will work together alongside community stakeholders to account for births and deaths in the pilot districts, adding that through this, they will learn lessons to implement in other districts in the final implementation of the project.
He disclosed that they had a mission to Tanzania with COMSA, where they learnt how to use technology in collecting data for births and deaths registration. According to him, they are going to share the experience they gathered and link it to the project they have already designed.
Alimatu Vandi, Assistant National Coordinator, COMSA, in her presentation, stated that the country’s life’s expectancy is very low, and that according to a survey done in 2019, it was 54 years. She lamented however that only 25% of deaths are officially reported.
She maintained that, because not all deaths are reported to the relevant authorities, they decided to register births and deaths from households and to also collect data on the causes of deaths using Electronic Verbal Autopsy, which is an interview done to know the signs and symptoms which lead to a person’s death.
She added that they are partnering with NCRA to provide a reliable sample registration system and to provide reliable on-going nationally representative causes of death data for the country, adding her staffs are working across all districts in the country.
The event was climaxed with several presentations and recommendations, as well as an interactive session.
