MOH Discloses Plans To Demand Birth Certificate Before Students’ Enrollment -As Liberia Celebrates African CRVS Day

By Alex Yomah
Liberia joined West African countries on Saturday, August 10, 2019, in remembrance of the African Civil Registration and Vital Statistics [CRVS] Day under the theme;“ Birth Certificates for All: Fundamental for protecting Human Rights and Promoting Inclusion’ held at the ELWA Hospital.
Speaking at ahead of Minister Jallah upon consent, Deputy Minister of Health for Planning, Varfee Tulay, informed that government through the Ministry of Health has planned to make birth certificate a compulsory document for students’ enrollment.
He said, in an effort to creating more awareness for Birth certificates; there are plans underway for the Ministry of Education to demand birth certificate as a pre-requisite documents for student’s enrolling at any elementary, secondary and as well as tertiary institutions.
Minister Tulay asserted that few months to come, “If you do not have birth certificate in this country- it will be very hard to even go to hospital because government wants to link everyone to the data system,” he said.
He said few days ago, he was in conversation with his colleagues from the Ministry of Health aimed at organizing a meeting with the Ministry of Education to making birth certificate issue a compulsory document thereby using the Ministry of Education and the government hospitals as key implementing partners.
“We are going to make sure that before any child enters in school, that child will have to produce his/her birth certificate. We urge everyone to take advantage of the birth certificate issue now,” Minister Tulay hinted.
Also speaking at the occasion, LIGIS Executive Director, Prof. Francis Wreh, mentioned that civil registration of the record taking, include; when people give birth, when people die, when people get married and among other records have not been effective in Liberia and other African countries- because those countries including Liberia which had not taken it seriously.
“When a child is born, that child needs to be registered. When somebody dies you have to register the dead body to establish the cause of his/her death,” he said.
According to Prof. Wreh, statistics are vital because it enables government to know how many people are in the country’s population, the amount of people married, divorced, died a year and most importantly, intended for development. Adding; “ When we get these statistics, we have what we call vital statistics system”.
Recommending, the LISGIS Boss said that those Ministries and agencies that are responsible for statistics, should get together to correlate in collecting data.
Health Minister, Dr. Wilhelmina Jallah, buttressing previous speakers at the ceremony, frowned on the lack of awareness of birth registration process.
The program which was poorly attended, she said as read in the proclamation signed by President George Weah and read during the program, the requisite ministries and agencies never abide-thereby boycotting their program.
Admonishing health workers, Dr. Jallah intoned that the day was special because it shows the effectiveness of birth registration system here.
“This celebration is vital because if we don’t have a say on this day, how do we have an effective system?” he asked.
She said, by 2020 before August 10, 2020, she was to see Birth registration process dramatized or advertised for people to know that there is birth registration ongoing at nearby hospitals or clinics as asserting the importance of registering their kids.
With that, Dr. Jallah indicated it will help to increase the number of children registered for a particular year. She however, applauded Redemption Hospital for registering the highest number of babies in the year under review.