Unregistered new births can cause public health outbreak – UNICEF  

Mr Osama Makkawi Khogali, the UNICEF Country Representative, has called for a multifaceted collaboration among key players, especially in education and health, to re-strategise better ways to improve on the registration of new births.  

He said the impact of not registering a newborn or child did not only have an effect on the child but could cause a public health outbreak where an intervention might not be able to cover everyone, because of inaccurate registration data.  

The ‘one-size’ national planning and ‘one-way’ national budgeting, he said, failed to cover children substantially, and affected children especially in the hard-to-reach areas.  

Mr Khogali, who made the call on a national broadcast programme, said it was unfortunate that more than 40 per cent of children birthed in the Eastern Region were not captured on the national birth registration data for 2024.  

“I wanted to understand why, and I was told that initially the terrain with most of these disadvantaged children was very difficult to access and I said I want to go and know how difficult it is,” he said.  

“I was there and if I could reach them, everybody can reach too.”  

The UNICEF Country Rep explained that an unregistered child “is not counted and that child almost does not exist.”  

“It’s an important human right for a child to have an identity and be registered as a human being.”  

He admonished the Government to devise strategies to close the disparities and provide services to children in the hard-to-reach areas.  

To him, birth registration was a low hanging fruit and could be executed quickly and easily for every child if all hands were brought on deck.  

“A teacher who identifies that a child in school is not registered can draw attention and follow up until the child is registered,” he noted.  

Source: GNA   

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