Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) systems play a significant role for all individuals by ensuring the registration of births, deaths, marriages, and other vital events, and the recording of causes of death (The importance of CRVS systems for gender equality | Get Every One in the Picture, 2020).

The Registration of Persons Act 2015 mandates National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) to register births, deaths, and adoptions as they occur and to register all persons in the country, and to issue National Identification Numbers for citizens and lien Identification Numbers for alien residents (‘Civil Registration And Vital Statistics Systems Of Uganda’, 2019).

Since 2015, registration has mainly focused on national ID, registering over 90% of the population aged 16+. However, birth registration coverage (32%) and, notably, death registration coverage (~2%) have lagged behind (Uganda Mobile VRS, 2021).

The goal of the CRVS Uganda is to support development of a functioning civil registration system that ensures the registration of all vital events including births and deaths and issuing of relevant certificates as proof of such registration for efficient government planning, effective use of resources and aid, and more accurate monitoring of progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

The CRVS project focuses on the following three areas:

• Support coordination/governance mechanisms via CRVS and mortality surveillance technical working groups (TWGs) to;
• Institute coordination/governance mechanisms
• Conduct periodic CRVS TWG (NIRA) and Mortality Surveillance sub-TWG meetings (UNIPH/MOH)
• Establish a sustainable mortality surveillance system [led by Uganda National Institute of Public Health (UNIPH)/Ministry of Health(MOH] through;
• Development of a mortality surveillance system for COVID-19 response
• Capture of real-time information on deaths from all Regional Referral Hospitals and select districts
• Support the improvement of death notification in health facility and community settings, and ultimately the registration of deaths in the national death registration and identification system (Led by NIRA)

The Key CVRS stakeholders in Uganda include the NIRA, MOH, the UNIPH, and the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), as well as several other partnering organizations (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Foundation, US CDC, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), Bloomberg Philanthropies and CDC/Uganda, Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI), WHO, World Bank, among others).

Developed CRVS Strategic to harmonize national mortality surveillance.

With all CRVS stakeholders in Uganda (MOH, NIRA, Baylor College of Medicine and WHO) trained over 180 clinicians at RRH’s and 330 at Health Center IV’s and 450 VHT’s at community level to support and improve death notification in both facility and community settings.

Established a governance mechanism through reinforcement and expansion efforts of the existing CRVS technical working groups (TWG).

Implementation of the rapid mortality surveillance system(RMS) in 15 initial districts to obtain timely data in support of the current COVID 19 pandemic response