Remarks

• This recommendation has been integrated from the 2019 WHO guideline Recommendations on digital interventions for health system strengthening (284), where it was considered a context-specific recommendation.
• The source guideline notes the following.
• Responses by the health system should include the capacity to accept the notifications and trigger appropriate health and social services, such as the initiation of postnatal services.
• Responses by the civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system should include the capacity to accept the notifications and to validate the information, in order to trigger the subsequent process of birth registration and certification.
• The following remarks were made by the Guideline Development Group (GDG) responsible for the original recommendation.
• The GDG acknowledged the limited evidence but emphasized that birth notification represents a vital first step in a care cascade that can ultimately lead to increased and timely access to health services and other social services. The GDG also believed that the use of mobile devices to perform this task was likely to provide a more expedient means of effecting the notification and subsequent health services.
• The GDG members noted that while birth notification should not be viewed as a substitute for legal birth registration, it could provide an opportunity to accelerate the registration by linking birth notifications to national civil registration systems. The GDG also recognized that digital notification of births could facilitate providing newborns with a legal identity and future access to health and other social services.
• It should also be noted that increases in the notification of births and deaths would require that civil registration services have, in turn, the capacity to manage a higher demand for registration and certification services.
• The ability for the health system and/or CRVS system to respond and act appropriately on the birth and death notification was seen as a critical component for successful implementation. If such linkages are not in place, the notification of birth and death events would not add any value and would incur an additional cost for the system.