10 April 2019 – The WHO country office in Pakistan, in collaboration with the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean and the Ministry of National Health Services Regulation and Coordination, organized two back-to-back national workshops on ICD 10-complaint medical certification of cause of death, based on the WHO approved tool to collect and report information on causes of death for public health planning.

The aim of the workshop was to build a critical mass of physicians in ICD 10-compliant death certification by introducing them to the 2016 WHO international standard medical certification of cause of death form and train them in completing this form in an ICD-10 compliant manner, orientation to ICD-10 coding using the online browser, and capacity building exercise on the simplified selection rules as well as introduction to DHIS-2 SMoL platform for underlying causes of death.

The first 2-day workshop took place in Islamabad on 11–12 February, 2019 was attended by 75 participants, including general physicians, statisticians and coders from Punjab, KP, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and ICT.

The second 2-day workshop took place in Karachi on 12-14 February, in which 45 participants participated from Sindh and Baluchistan provinces. The workshop was inaugurated by Dr. Jamal Nasher on the behalf of WR and Technical team of HSD from country office. Dr Samra Mazhar and Dr. Waheed Lashari Deputy Directors, Program, from the Ministry of National Health Services Regulations and Coordination encouraged to all participants for adopting the WHO tool to transform the health system in Pakistan including to achieve the universal health coverage and contribute towards the progress of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the opening remarks.

This workshop was a great emphasis to reinforce knowledge and skills to transform the health system. It focused on the registration of death including the determination and recording of causes of death and producing accurate mortality statistics which is an essential component of a functional Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) system in Pakistan. Moreover, Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) offered for the collaboration to develop the android app which will provide credible Civil Registration Vital Statistics data at country wide.