This document offers guidance on strategies for strengthening vital statistics in national civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) plans, with a focus on mortality and cause-of-death statistics, which are urgently needed to inform public health decision-making and monitor progress towards national and international health goals. The document summarizes key mortality related indicators and describes the strengths and limitations of different data sources.

This is an online module on “Improving Cause of Death Reporting” for training physicians. It covers topics such as importance of cause of death, completing a death certificate, and the medical examiner or coroner physician overview. This module can be used with or without audio.

This Handbook provides guidance for developing national capability to operate and maintain, in a coordinated manner, the fundamental systems of civil registration and vital statistics. It contains course material, consisting of 23 modules that can be adapted to conduct an effective and comprehensive training on the essentials for civil registration and vital statistics systems. The modules addresses a range of issues related to the establishment, operation and maintenance of reliable civil registration and vital statistics systems.

This handbook shows how to develop a comprehensive legal framework for a civil registration system that support its juridical function, its role as a source of continuous vital statistics, and by other agencies such as the health ministry, electoral rolls, identification services, population registers, pension funds, which depend on accurate registration data.

This Handbook provides guidance to countries for the improvement of their civil registration and vital statistics systems and background and specifications for developing and establishing civil registration and vital statistics systems in countries that do not yet have such systems in place. The Handbook deals with essential components of structure, management, operation and maintenance functions to handle the entire range of vital events-live births, deaths, foetal deaths, marriages and dissolutions of marriage- from the civil registration and the vital statistics perspectives.

This Handbook provides guidance to national authorities for the development of data processing systems for civil registration and vital statistics systems. It focuses on advance planning for computerization and proposes options for countries to consider, including model organizational structures for computerization.

The Handbook is a comprehensive guide for countries in designing policies on confidentiality of individual information on vital records and the adjunct statistical forms. It also offers methods to permanently store and protect vital records.

This handbook provides guidance to countries to design and conduct information, education and communication activities to support national civil registration and vital statistics systems. It covers development of a communication action plan for community workshops and meetings and for media, and special techniques to reach target groups and less privileged populations and those who live in rural areas. It also discusses resource mobilization, development of the time frame, required resources, and identification and mobilization of human resources.

This Handbook supersedes the Handbook of Vital Statistics Methods published by the United Nations in 1955. It provides up-to-date guidance to countries to implement international recommendations adopted by the United Nations on vital statistics systems. Volume I addresses issues involved in running comprehensive civil registration and vital statistics systems and their coordination.