Zambia's death coverage climbs with Data for Health

Zambia's rate of death registration coverage has been low as a result of the law that requires all deaths that are registered to have a cause. The Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative in Zambia is using verbal autopsy methods to count deaths that occur outside of health settings, in order to get a better understanding of who is dying of what in the country, which will better inform preventative health policies and plans.

Interview with Brian Munkombwe, Health Scientist, US CDC; Chomba Mwango, Country Coordinator, Data for Health Initiative; Lisuba Kabanda, Senior Registrar, National Registration Passport and Citizenship in Melbourne, Australia in December 2018.

Topics include:

• Capturing more births and deaths (0:42)
• Value of verbal autopsy in Zambia (2:19)
• System integration (3:10)
• Piloting verbal autopsy (4:25)
• Findings of verbal autopsy pilot (5:21)
• Medical certification of cause of death (6:02)
• Mortality coding (7:29)
• Ghana Public Health Bulletin (10:01)

Historically, birth and death registration rates in Zambia are very low, which is a big problem for health prioritisation and planning says Dr Yuta Yokobori, who works with both the Japanese and Zambian health systems.

Dr Yokobori shares some of Zambia's plans to improve their birth and death information: