Health Ministry – AIIMS to set up National Death Registry

• The Health Ministry in collaboration with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) will start a National Death Registry for information about each and every death in hospitals across the country.
• AIIMS has already implemented the pilot version of the death registry with the unique feature of having a coding system called the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED), an international standard of providing codes, terms and synonyms and definitions which cover anatomy, diseases, findings, procedures, microorganisms, etc.
• The official said the ministry has called a meeting of all state health departments so as to have the programme rolled out across India.
• AIIMS will be technical as well as the implementing partner for this programme.

Objective

• The objective is to have a database about cause of deaths in hospitals across India.
• This will help policy-makers have a better understanding of disease outbreaks so as to optimise resources and healthcare facilities in respective regions

Why is this important?

• Currently as health is a state subject, the entire death data is not being transmitted to the central depository, which is creating hurdles for policymakers in framing health and disease related policies.
• As of now the data Health Ministry have is tentative but under this system deaths will be uniformly coded along with the cause and details of the patients.