This document provides guidance on how to improve the quality of cause of death data in hospitals, and will be useful for Ministry of Health staff, hospital administrators and managers, medical society officers, medical education leaders, and physicians. It will also be of interest to stakeholders involved in planning and strengthening civil registration and vital statistics systems, as it provides overall guidance on the steps required in improving hospital data.

This handbook aims to guide doctors in filling out death certificates. Death certification forms an important part of a doctor’s duties because the information recorded in death certificates helps decision-makers determine health priorities for prevention of deaths due to similar causes in the future.

Improving national capacity, skills and knowledge is a critical component of any strategy to strengthen a CRVS system. As part of the D4H Initiative, six training courses are available, with more under development. These courses are currently only open to those countries enrolled as part of the D4H Initiative.

More than one-third of the indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals will require data from a CRVS system. As such, continued investments in CRVS are necessary to ensure countries can measure progress.

Civil registration should be the basis of any national identification system, and must be strengthened before any identification systems are put in place.

This tool is designed to quickly assess the quality of death certification practices through checking for the presence of common errors in death certificates. This can be used to assess the quality of death certification as part of routine assessment, or to assess the training needs of doctors in designing cause of death certification training. This tool can also be used to evaluate the effect of death certification training.

The Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS), Data for Health Initiative (D4H), at The University of Melbourne has developed an assessment tool to assess the quality of death certification practices through checking for the presence of common errors in death certificates. This can be used to assess the quality of death certification as part of routine assessment, or to assess the training needs of doctors in designing cause of death certification training.

The National Strategic Plan aims to achieve a long-term vision for Cambodia — that every person has a legal identity. This will require building a modern, permanent, universal civil registration system (CRVS) that will generate reliable vital statistics and an integrated population identification system (IPIS). Building these systems will eliminate the necessity to develop parallel systems for population identification, thus ensuring the efficient use of resources.