Sierra Leone: NCRA trains healthcare workers on digital birth registration

Fifty-five midwives drawn from 104 Peripheral Health Units (PHUs) across the 16 Chiefdoms in Bo District have gone through a day’s Training on digital births and deaths Registration.

The training which was organized by the National Civil Registration Authority NCRA, Bo District with funds from UNICEF took place at the Methodist Youth Resource Centre in Bo on December 7,  2020.

District Registration Officer, NCRA, Bo District, Mrs. Aminata Patricia Lebbie, averred that as part of efforts to cascade the novelty of Births and Deaths Registration across the country, they decided to bring on board the midwives whom she said are very critical in registration of births and deaths in their respective PHUs.

She stressed the importance of Digital Births Registration which she avowed bodes well with the growing demands of the 21st century, adding that it’s a wakeup call to transform paper births and deaths registration into digital registration.

Senior Public Health Sister, District Health Management Team, Bo, Sister Gladys Sesay lauded the digital transformation. She described it as a long awaited dream.

Digital Births and Deaths Registration according to her will show tremendous progress on the number of Births and Deaths, recorded daily.

“Aside this” she went, “it will also help in calculating data generated for vaccination purposes and to generate report on the state on vital statistics in relation to new births.”

Two of the midwives interviewed, Rebecca Hawa Ben Jusu, from Jimmy Bagbo and Hannah Koroma from Kpendembu Health Post in Nyawalenga Chiefdom said previously, they had been the ones who took the onerous challenges of transporting paperwork generated from the fields to Bo City. She added that back then it was often for some of the papers to go missing along the way while at other times they were torn apart before being submitted to their supervisors.

Birth Registration will serve as a deterrent to fraudulent activities and fraudsters who often are in possession of multiple birth certificates for criminal enterprises.

 By Jonathan Hindolo Kurabu

14/12/2020. ISSUE NO: 7966