WHO, PLAN launch mobile birth registration in Kenya

World Health Organization (WHO) and Children’s development organization, Plan International have unveiled a mobile registration project that will help Kenyan parents access birth certificates of their newborns by phone.

Under the Project, a community health worker is only required to use a mobile phone to collect data on newborns in their assigned areas and later relay it to the relevant officials to enable the registration of the children.

The project, which is currently in operation in Kwale County, aims to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of birth registration and incentivize parents and guardians to register children.

This initiative is beneficial to the country as currently only about half of Kenyan children at coastal areas such as Kwale are registered with the process being long, costly, highly procedure and with inadequate analysis of the registration data.

The full implementation of the project nationwide would ease the work of the Kenya Department of Civil Registration, which is planning to digitize more than 35 million records in preparation for mobile registration.