Approximately 80% of registered births in Fiji occur at just five major hospitals, underscoring the crucial role these facilities play in the country’s maternal and child health system. The Fiji Bureau of Statistics (FBoS) revealed that 82.2% of all registered births took place at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital, Lautoka, Labasa, Nadi, and Nausori hospitals.
This concentration of births presents a unique opportunity to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of birth registration data. By prioritizing these key hospitals in the birth registration process, FBoS notes that the accuracy can be improved significantly, decreasing data entry errors and expediting the national birth registration records.
The FBoS report titled “Addressing gender inequities in on-time birth registration in Fiji through the identification of priority geographic areas for targeted interventions” highlights a significant breakthrough in data management. By standardizing the free-text entries for places of birth, an impressive 99.9% of birth registration records could be assigned a valid location. Furthermore, nearly all records, 99.6%, could be traced back to a health facility, with only a mere 0.3% designated as community births and 0.1% remaining undeciphered.
Throughout Fiji, the bureau identified 130 unique health facilities in the birth data, which includes hospitals, health centers, nursing stations, and private clinics. However, a staggering 99.3% of all birth records were linked to just 29 hospitals, indicating the concentrated nature of birth registrations. The five primary hospitals—Colonial War Memorial, Lautoka, Labasa, Nadi, and Nausori—accounted for the vast majority of births, with the Colonial War Memorial alone responsible for 40.7% of records.
To further streamline the registration process, FBoS suggests incorporating the names of the top 20 facilities into a drop-down list in the data entry platform. This change could reduce free-text data entry related to places of birth by approximately 99.1%, thereby enhancing data accuracy and facilitating more timely analysis of birth registration statistics.
This approach not only promises significant improvements in data handling but also aligns with broader efforts to bolster workplace efficiency, allowing clerks to spend less time on data entry tasks. As the country moves forward, these enhancements could yield substantial benefits for Fiji’s health system, ultimately leading to better maternal and child health outcomes.
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