Improving coverage of civil registration and vital statistics, Bangladesh

Bangladesh has no national system for registering deaths and determining their causes. As a result, policymakers lack reliable and complete data to inform public health decisions. In 2016, the government of Bangladesh introduced a pilot project to strengthen the civil registration and vital statistics system and generate cause-of-death data in Kaliganj Upazila. Community-based health workers were trained to notify births and deaths to the civil registrar, and to conduct verbal autopsy interviews with family members of a deceased person. International experts in cause-of-death certification and coding trained master trainers on how to complete the international medical certificate of cause of death. These trainers then trained physicians and coders. Between the start of the project and 2018, births registered within 45 days increased fivefold, and deaths registered within 45 days increased threefold. Between January 2017 and December 2018, 105 master trainers and more than 7,000 physicians were trained to complete the international medical certificate of cause of death, and they completed more than 12,000 certificates.