1. Meeting of the Regional Advisory
Committee on Health Statistics–
CRAES 2012
Dr. Fatima Marinho, HA Coordinator
Havana, Cuba – 26 to 28 March 2012

2. Content
1. Synthesis of the 2009 CRAES Meeting
– Topics addressed
– Key recommendations
2. 2012 CRAES Meeting
– Objectives
– Expected results
– Main topics

3. CRAES Meeting– 2009
Background
Main topics addressed
2. The current status of vital and health statistics in the Region
3. Regional Core Health Data Initiative and Health Profiles
(RCHDI&HP)
4. Underreporting of mortality and ill define causes of death
5. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 4 and 5
6. WHO Family of International Classifications (WHO-FIC)
The previous CRAES meeting took place at PAHO
Headquarters, in Washington D.C. from 11 to 13 August 2009

4. CRAES 2009: Key recommendations
Data Correction Methods Millennium Development Goals
• Training in providing correct • Propose strategies for analyzing and
information on death certificates revising the indicators used by the
various international agencies
• Promote use of official statistics,
considering how they are • Use of official statistics as they are
generated and not replacing them generated rather than substituting
estimates at the PAHO level
with estimates
• Estimate production within MDG,
• Create an analytical working consider the administrative division of
group for the purpose of the country and size of the population
proposing estimating or
adjustment methods and criteria • Create a working group tasked with
for recommending their use proposing estimating or adjustment
methods and criteria for
recommending their use
• Support research on the
development of estimating • Promote the deliberate search for
methods and the improvement of deaths (child, maternal) in all the
data quality in reporting the cause countries to improve coverage and
of death records on the cause of death

5. CRAES 2009: Key recommendations
Family of International Classification (FIC)
• CRAES will support the design, review, and implementation of a
regional training plan
• PAHO will consuls with the countries to ascertain the possibility
of arranging for the rights to print ICD-10 and other
classifications, as well as actually printing the volumes there.
This initiative would result in reduced cost to publish the ICD-10
and other classifications
• PAHO supports the idea of translating the WHO-FIC materials
being developed

6. CRAES Meeting – 2012
Objectives and Expected Results

7. CRAES 2012: Objectives
• To know the current situation of the PAHO mortality system
• To discuss strategies in order to diminish the underreporting and
improve the certification, coding and classification; the garbage
code and groups and list of proposed causes
• To discuss garbage codes denomination in Spanish and English
• To know the regional results and the analysis of the garbage codes
for every country

8. CRAES 2012: Expected Results
 Indicators that PAHO should use to evaluate the mortality
information
 Proposal of denomination of the term garbage code
 Discuss the garbage code
 Discuss a List for report of death causes
 Discuss a List for presentation of leading causes of death
 Strategies to diminish the poor registry and the poor
certification, coding and classification of death causes
 Agreed about a group of discussion

9. CRAES 2012: Main topics
 Maternal Mortality (MM):
 Current situation in the Region of the Americas
 Estimates
 Propose guide to improve the MM information
 Basic Indicators (BI):
 Current situation
 Proposal for changes of some indicators
 Regional Health Observatory (RHO):
 Progress
 Recommendations

10. Thank You