Caribbean coun­tries are to ben­e­fit from the re­newed agree­ment be­tween the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) and Bloomberg Phil­an­thropies to en­hance civ­il reg­is­tra­tion and vi­tal sta­tis­tics (CRVS) sys­tems in the Amer­i­c­as.

PA­HO said that the agree­ment will be “sup­port­ing coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries of the Caribbean to im­prove the qual­i­ty and avail­abil­i­ty of vi­tal sta­tis­tics to in­crease the pro­por­tion of ac­cu­rate­ly and com­plete­ly reg­is­tered births and deaths, and to mod­ernise sys­tems”.

It said that the agree­ment ex­pands on­go­ing work un­der the glob­al Da­ta for Health (D4H) ini­tia­tive, aimed at im­prov­ing how coun­tries col­lect and use da­ta on births, deaths, and caus­es of death to shape pub­lic health poli­cies.

PA­HO said in many coun­tries across the re­gion, da­ta on deaths re­main in­com­plete or in­ac­cu­rate, not­ing for ex­am­ple, in sev­er­al coun­tries, few­er than half of death cer­tifi­cates in­clude a doc­u­ment­ed cause of death.

“Un­der­re­port­ing is al­so com­mon, with more than 20 per cent of deaths go­ing un­record­ed in some ar­eas. This lack of re­li­able in­for­ma­tion lim­its gov­ern­ments’ abil­i­ty to pri­or­i­tize health needs and al­lo­cate re­sources ef­fec­tive­ly.”

PA­HO said to ad­dress these chal­lenges, to­geth­er with Bloomberg Phil­an­thropies, they will con­tin­ue to sup­port coun­tries in as­sess­ing and im­prov­ing their in­for­ma­tion sys­tems, with a strong fo­cus on CRVS.

The project is ex­pect­ed to run through 2027, al­low­ing for a sus­tained ef­fort to strength­en da­ta sys­tems across the re­gion.

Key ac­tiv­i­ties un­der the agree­ment in­clude as­sess­ing na­tion­al CRVS sys­tems and propos­ing tai­lored im­prove­ments as well as de­vel­op­ing a re­gion­al train­ing course to help coun­tries in­te­grate the lat­est it­er­a­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Clas­si­fi­ca­tion of Dis­eases (ICD-11) in­to their health in­for­ma­tion sys­tems

The agree­ment will al­so pro­mote in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion in ad­vanc­ing health in­for­ma­tion sys­tems, in­clud­ing through the de­vel­op­ment of work­shops that bring to­geth­er stake­hold­ers from across the globe to dis­cuss the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of civ­il reg­is­tra­tion and vi­tal sta­tis­tics sys­tems.

The project is aligned with PA­HO’s In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems for Health (IS4H) Ac­tion Plan 2024–2030, fo­cus­ing on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, in­for­ma­tion sys­tems in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty, se­cure da­ta ex­change, and ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing. Knowl­edge-shar­ing ac­tiv­i­ties—such as a com­mu­ni­ty of prac­tice, tech­ni­cal we­bi­na­rs and pub­li­ca­tions—will al­so help coun­tries adopt and repli­cate ef­fec­tive prac­tices.

The agree­ment will en­able coun­tries to gen­er­ate more com­plete and re­li­able da­ta to be­come bet­ter equipped to make ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sions that can im­prove health out­comes and re­duce in­equities across the Amer­i­c­as.

Mean­while, PA­HO said it has launched a new in­ter­ac­tive dash­board to en­hance mon­i­tor­ing and analy­sis of res­pi­ra­to­ry virus cir­cu­la­tion trends across the Amer­i­c­as, in­clud­ing the Caribbean, with the goal of strength­en­ing sur­veil­lance and fa­cil­i­tat­ing time­ly analy­sis of re­gion­al trends.

This in­ter­ac­tive dash­board presents vi­ro­log­i­cal da­ta (from FluNet) and epi­demi­o­log­i­cal da­ta (from Flu­ID) avail­able through the re­gion­al da­ta hub (AMart), pro­vid­ing an in­tu­itive, mul­ti­lin­gual plat­form for ex­plor­ing key in­di­ca­tors.

The dash­board fea­tures three main sec­tions, in­clud­ing vi­ro­log­ic sur­veil­lance which presents per cent pos­i­tiv­i­ty and lab­o­ra­to­ry sam­ple da­ta for all coun­tries and sub­re­gions, en­abling de­tailed track­ing of virus cir­cu­la­tion pat­terns and coun­try pro­files, al­low­ing users to se­lect any coun­try in the Amer­i­c­as and view all re­lat­ed vi­ro­log­ic and syn­dromic sur­veil­lance da­ta on a sin­gle, in­te­grat­ed page.