World Health Summit calls for smart care system in health decisions

By MONICA KAYOMBO in Berlin

SOME stakeholders at the just ended 2025 World Health Summit (WHS) have come to an agreement that Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) is critical for planning, decision making, surveillance monitoring and infectious diseases control.
The stakeholders that are in support of having CRVs are the World Health Organisation (WHO), United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), Bloomberg Philanthropies and CDC Foundation among others.
Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI Head of Prevention and Preparedness Dr Paul Zulu says CRVs allow for quick outbreak response, real improved equity in health services, better planning and budgeting and enhanced accountability.
Speaking on the sidelines of the 2025 World Health Summit (WHS) in Berlin at a session dubbed: ‘The Lifesaving Potential of Death Data: Shaping Health Policies that Save Lives,’’ Dr Zulu said data can be used for making informed decisions.
He explained that based on the data received by the ZNPHI, they are able to know which interventions to make to prevent any health public health threats and also helped in shaping the health policies including the national budgets.
“There is strong political commitment under the Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security and the Ministry of Health to modernise CRVs. Over 5, 000 medical doctors were trained in medical certification of cause of death,” he said.
Dr Zulu said despite progress made from four percent years back to date where 42 percent of deaths are registered, remote rural districts and community deaths remain under-reported,” he said.
He says continuous training is needed for coders, forensic pathologists and health workers to ensure data quality and accurate cause of death certificates.

He noted that other challenges in the implementation of CRVs is infrastructure gap, legal and data sharing such as institutional coordination between ministries and other government institutions and agencies.
Dr Zulu has reported that the e-death notification system has cut reporting delays by 88 percent from 60 days to seven days ensuring mortality data reach decision makers in real time (Integration of smart care: electronic medical records) with INRIS allowing automatic transfer of death data and improves accuracy,’’ he observed.
Dr Zulu observed that Zambia’s journey shows that when digital tools and skilled people come together, death data become life-saving intelligence.
He said the smart care system introduced in Zambia has helped to put data together which can be visualised for decision making.
WHO representative in charge of digital innovation Alain Labrique said investing in CRVs is critical for meaningful change in health transformation.

“Digital tools reduce the burden of getting statistics,” he said
UN ESCAP Associate Population Affairs officer Statistics Division Chloe Mercedes Harvey says the organisation has observed with concern that processing of death certificates in certain developing countries is tedious.
She said an estimated 40 percent of deaths are not recorded worldwide. And yet, strengthening the analysis and collection of death data-CVRVs is one of the most impactful investments in public health a country can make.
A health and Management professional at Bloomberg Philanthropies Besty Fuller said in 2015, her organisation funded the Data for Health Initiative with partners to help the low and medium countries with the sole purpose of improving data on births, deaths and causes of death to help in making public health policies.
In the last 10 years partnering countries have collected 12.2 million birth records and 16.2 million new or improved death records.