WHO launches campaign to boost healthcare information

The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a campaign to encourage civil registration of births and deaths in the developing world as it aims to better gauge the effectiveness of global health campaigns.

Under the new Health Metrics Network scheme the WHO hopes countries will improve their civil registration procedures, intensively targeting three countries - Cambodia, Sierra Leone and Syria, with more to be announced in the new year.

In a statement the WHO highlighted the importance of civil registration as a means by which governments and organisations can design and implement effective health policies, as well as allowing them to measure their success rate.

WHO director-general Margaret Chan said: "No single UN agency is responsible for ensuring that births and deaths are registered, so it has fallen between the cracks. That is why we have failed to establish, support, and sustain civil registration systems over the past 30 years in the developing world.

"Without the statistics that these systems produce, we can only have a partial view of the impact of $120 billion (£60 billion) spent annually in official development aid," she added.

In one of the WHO's targeted countries, Cambodia, figures provided by the organisation indicated that life expectancy is 51 for men and 57 for women, compared to 69 and 72 respectively in the UK

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