Registering Births and Deaths in Kenya: Current problems, solution pathways and interventions.

In Kenya, roughly half of all births and deaths leave no paper trail—no certificate, no record, no official count. This invisibility cripples health planning. Without knowing who is born, who dies, or what they die of, policymakers cannot allocate vaccines, maternal care, or disease surveillance resources effectively. Kenya’s civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system is riddled with gaps, but the precise location and causes of those failures remain poorly understood. The researcher will use a network of existing health surveillance sites across Kenya to measure how many births and deaths go unregistered, map where the registration system breaks down, and identify why some families register events while others do not. If successful, the work will produce an evidence-based intervention package—specific strategies to plug the registration gaps. That could mean more accurate mortality data for diseases such as malaria or maternal complications, better targeting of child health programmes, and a functioning CRVS system that feeds reliable numbers into national and global health metrics. For the families involved, it could mean a child gains a legal identity or a death is officially recorded, enabling inheritance, insurance, and public health follow-up.