The recent emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of strong laboratory systems for detecting outbreaks of infectious diseases, as well as for other personal and population health purposes such as monitoring HIV viral load suppression among patients receiving antiretroviral treatment, or measuring pathogen resistance to antibiotics.
Read MoreCivil registration is critical for human rights and effective governance. Globally, almost half of the world’s children, most of them in Africa, do not have their birth registered and are consequently invisible in the eyes of the law. Being Invisible, they are vulnerable to many forms of abuse and neglect. They may also be unable to access health services because their governments do not know they exist. It is not only births that go uncounted, around two-thirds of all deaths currently go unregistered, leaving the details of death unknown and potential responses to their causes impossible.
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