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| pic: Barack Obama's birth certificate released to the public to prove his identity as born USA and not [only] Kenyan. |
A birth certificate is a documentation of one’s birth details
for purposes of records and interventions. It includes mainly your name, sex,
parents’ names, place and date of birth. Other additional inserts for record
and purposes are a specific Entry Number, Date of Registration, Citizenship of
Parents, Place of Residence and Registering Officer.
There are more details that may not be recorded on the
certificate but noted mainly for interventions. They include; nature of birth
(alive or dead), weight of child, age, previous births and level of education
of mother amongst others.
It is encouraged that a delivery happens at a health
facility for health reasons and where the above information is easily noted or
retrieved in the case where an expectant mother was attending the very facility
for prenatal care. If a delivery happens at home, it is notified by an assistant
registrar – the area assistant chief. To notify is to fill in the details as
mentioned above and issue the mother with a replica note to use in applying for
the certificate.
If it goes unnotified, past six months or more, and the
certificate is later needed, it will be a late registration. A late
registration fails to capture most of the intervention details and is absent in
decision making. It is to this that an intervention on using MCH post natal
reporting as in giving BCG and other immunizations to identify any unnotified child.
This is adding on the creation for birth certificate demand as in schools,
employment, migration, obtaining an ID in aim to backtrack registration as well
as tackle any legal issues around identity.
A death certificate too is equally important as it notifies
the absence of life, a renouncement of a birth certificate use. Getting a death
certificate is essential and anyone can get a death certificate of a person
they know. It is not limited to one person or two but all people of interest to
the deceased. Even for inspection and similar to birth.
Unlike the birth certificate, several copies of a death
certificate can be issued, maintaining the legals; specific Entry number and
details pertaining to the diseased – name, age, sex, place of death, occupation
and cause(s) of death. Only the paper page serial changes as each printable
paper has a serial number for purposes of accounting for certificates being
presently printed.
It prevents contests of inheritance or benefits claims as
all and sundry later meet at one desk to prove relationship with deceased among
other support documents like a letter from local government detailing the deceased
household(s) or members’.
As many deaths than births currently happen at a community
level, it is feared that lay autopsy and reporting will slow down on
interventions as the reporting does not include underlying causals but the
happenstance. A sudden death capture would as well be a cardiac arrest death due
to high blood pressure. To avoid any death case from going unreported, a burial
permit is required.
A severe road accident could kill a cancer patient but a postmortem
report can be more reliable as to the bodily health state at the time of death.
With a medical history, the lay reporting can be supported or if the death is
in doubt, going for a postmortem report and be certified by a clinician or a
doctor is encouraged.
The doctor’s report (D1) is superior to the one written by
an assistant chief (D2) at the community level. The latter can only notify
natural deaths happening strictly in the sub-location. No matter the place
where a D1 is filled, the death place assists in reporting and it is the civil registrar
of that area (sub-county or county) that lastly registers the case as a
permanent record.
In the yester years the births and death registrations were
far from the people and the demand for the services not made, hence the
presence of many late case registrations today. A late registration of either
birth or death does not give information prompt and there is little of evidence
as in death case. This promotes an ‘interview’ session at the registries – in
searching for evidence on place of birth, parentage, intent, death et al, often
slowing down activities.
There is more to this. The civil registry also issues births
and death certificates of people born or dead outside Kenya but are Kenya
citizens. It also issues presumed death certificate in cases where a person’s
whereabouts cannot be traced. This happens at the national office.
It is important that whoever informs is literate, truthful
and of good intent. Names should be written in the spellings and order given at
first. Where in doubt, leaving a blank is better than filling as petitioning to
fill might be easier than petitioning to remove or fill with another name.
Lastly, it is important to safe keep the certificate and
retrieve in its good state whenever needed. A torn, dirty, discolored or
altered certificate will require one to look for a replacement.
...
The writer is a Community Development Agent with a background in Community Resource Management and an interest in ethnography. In 2022/2023 he worked in the office of Civil Registration [Vihiga County] as a PSC Intern Cohort 4.
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