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Vital record


Vital records are records of life events kept under governmental authority, including birth certificates, marriage licenses, and death certificates. In some jurisdictions, vital records may also include records of civil unions or domestic partnerships.

In the United States, vital records are typically maintained at both the county and state levels. In the United Kingdom and numerous other countries vital records are recorded in the civil registry.

Various European countries are members of an International Commission on Civil Status which provides a mutually recognized convention on the coding of entries appearing in civil status documents, with common codes and translation tables between the language of the member states. They also provide an English unofficial translation.

In the fields of Records Management and Archival Science the term vital record is used to mean "records, regardless of medium, which are essential to the organization in order to continue with its business-crucial functions both during and after a disaster. They need not be permanent, might be active or inactive, originals or copies."

Note that only the life events meaning is restricted to government; the records management meaning in this article applies to both government and non-government organizations.

In the past 10 years, there has been an overall increase in global birth registration rates of children under five from 58 percent to 65 percent. However, more than 100 developing countries still do not have functioning systems that can support efficient registration of births and other life events like marriages and death. Around the world, almost 230 million children under the age of five are not registered. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 85 million of these children, while 135 million live in Asia and the Pacific. Progress with death registration has been much slower globally. In countries in most need of CRVS, up to 80 percent of deaths that occur outside of health facilities and twothirds of all deaths globally are not counted.


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