The Government of Jamaica is working towards the digitisation of patient records across health facilities. Speaking at the inaugural Caribbean Civil Registration and Identity Management Conference on Monday, Minister of Health, Dr. Chris Tufton said the Government is committed to implementing civil registration and identification policies in order to strengthen developing planning.

Civil registration, which records vital events such as births and deaths by age, sex and cause, is the cornerstone of public health planning. It is also important in establishing and protecting a legal identity, Tufton said.

The Registrar General’s Department (RGD) is Jamaica’s sole repository of birth, death, marriage and foetal death records. Dr. Tufton noted that approximately 95 per cent of Jamaica’s births are registered by the agency, which has over seven million births in its database.

He noted that a critical part of the process is the establishment of a national identification system to capture and store the personal identity information of citizens and persons resident in Jamaica.

“Countries need to know how many people are born and die each year and the main causes of their deaths in order to have well-functioning health systems. When deaths go unaccounted for and the causes of death are not documented, governments cannot design effective public health policies or measure their impact,” he pointed out.

Dr. Tufton said that, globally, two-thirds or 38 million of 56 million annual deaths are not recorded and that almost half of the world’s children go unregistered citing figures from the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Countries that do not have a well-functioning civil registration system only have approximate ideas of the numbers, the longevity and the health of their population,” he said and called on countries within the region to update their civil registration legislation and systems.

In light of this, the Registrar General’s Department has planned a three-day conference under the theme ‘Civil Registry and Identity Protection: Development Imperative’ to be held at the Montego Bay Conference Centre from July 6-8.

The conference will provide for the sharing of best practices in civil registration and national identification across the Caribbean subregion, and the standardisation of data collection protocols that will better enable cross-comparison of country data. Following the conference, the RGD expects to establish a Caribbean network of civil registrars and develop recommendations for national and regional civil registration and identity management policies. To date, 18 countries have confirmed their participation.