Birth Registration

A total of 188,364 births (live and stillbirths) were reported in 2021 as compared to 135,467 in 2020. Out of this number for 2021, 99 percent (187,025) were live births and 1 percent (1,339) were stillbirths. The sex ratio calculated for live and stillbirths separately shows that the sex ratio is higher within stillbirths (131) as compared to live births (101). The sex ratio at birth for both categories suggests that there were more male births than female births for the year 2021. The mean age of mothers at birth stands at 25.2 years and 97 percent of all reported births occurred in health facilities.

Out of the total live births reported for 2021, a total of 181,741 were registered with males and females accounting for 91,646 (50.4%) and 90,095 (49.6%) respectively. Current and late registered births (births that occurred and registered in 2021) accounted for 93% of all the registered births and the remaining 7% (delayed) occurred before 2021. Table 1 below shows the distribution of registered and reported births per district.

Table 1: Distribution of registered and reported births per district