THE GHANA HEALTH SERVICE TO BEGIN DIGITAL TRACKING OF BABIES~BAWUMIA

 

The Ghana Health Service is to begin digitally tracking and monitoring all pregnant women across the country to ensure all new born babies receive a national ID number at birth, the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has disclosed. This has become possible following the ongoing linkage of the data of the National Identification Authority, Ghana Health Service, Birth and Deaths Registry, Ghana Statistical Service, and the Ghana Police Service to create a comprehensive database of all persons residing in Ghana in order to help in policy formulation and planning, and help with the issue of national ID numbers and cards.

Vice President Bawumia made the disclosure at the launch of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) at the University of Ghana, Legon, on Thursday, 10 February 2022.

To aid the tracking, the Ghana Statistical Service has agreed to hand over 13,000 tablets used in the recent national Population and Housing Census to the Ghana Health Service and will also provide other logistical support to the health workers, the Vice President added.

“These tablets will track pregnant mothers from antenatal clinics until birth. What we are trying to do is that immediately a child is born, the data will be transmitted to the Births and Deaths registry, and the NIA who will both record it. Then the NIA will immediately issue a National Identification Number for the child,” he explained.

“Starting sometime this year, we are quite advanced, the Ghana Health Service will announce the exact start date. So we will have that linkage between the NIA, the Ghana Health Service, the Statistical Service because they need that data of who has died, who has been born, etc. The Police also record a lot of deaths on our roads and other places, this is why they are also linked into the system so that they can also report, so that we have a comprehensive data.