The National Population Commission (NPC) is collaborating with stakeholders in the health sector in the digitisation of birth registration in Nigeria, according to its Director of Vital Registration, Mathew Sunday.
Last Friday at a stakeholders’ meeting on birth registration, organised by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration with the NPC in Kano, the international body’s Chief of Kano Field Office, Rahama Farah said that only 33 per cent of children in Nigeria have birth certificates.
Farah, who was represented by the Senior Education Specialist, Michael Banda, said: “The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey MICS 2021 shows that about one in every four births of Nigerian children aged under five years are not registered. According to MICS 2021, only 33 per cent of these registered children have a birth certificate”.
Providing updates on the efforts thus far by the NPC in ensuring that children in Nigeria get registered at birth, Sunday said: “We are collaborating with the health sector, especially the Primary Health Care. We are going to have a meeting very soon with all the stakeholders in the health sector. We are going digital.
“We are automating the processes of childbirth registration to ensure that there will be no double registration and for the purpose of probability. We are working with other sister agencies such as the Federal Ministry of Health and the National Bureau of Statistics because sharing data on the analogue platform is very difficult.
“A lot of children are born outside medical facilities, especially in rural areas. One measure that we have adopted is that we have found out that these children are immunised, irrespective of where they are born.
“We have been collaborating with the health sector for years but it is not enough. We are now moving into integrating birth registration into the health sector activities. For instance, on the immunisation card of a child, one will see a column if a child is registered and if not, the health personnel will advise the parents to go register the child”.
